Home with demos...

I have touched a sacred part of the sky with my own two hands.

Some of you will have a copy of this demo in your ears within a week.

Thank you for your love and most of all I thank the universe for channeling these melodies through my heart and hands because this music has released a lifetime of grief, anger, fear and disappointment and much love and joy in being alive that I have sealed away inside my heart and it must be "released" and "healed" as it were.

I was browsing through old photos and found this wonderful spider web with rain drops I took a couple of years ago on the Banks Peninsula trek. I feel like a lot of cob webs have been washed away... and clear, crystal light has replaced them...

I will no doubt write a ton of shit about my situation regarding my spiritual journey this week end...

For now I will float...

Fall time flowers in the Studio...

orbs

Final mixing on OPEN HEART

Yesterday I checked the final add ons and take away editing the New Recording. I will call it "OPEN HEART".
Today was a stunning Autumn day. We drove out to Frankton for a splendid lunch of Fish & Chips!
Sat outside in the autumn light admiring the Remarkables. These are the mountains filmed in the
movie Lord of The Rings. After lunch and running some errands we drove back to QT. I then went for a
long walk along the lake. I have dreamed of the day my digital camera would one day photograph an
"ORB"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today it happened. Enjoy my walk. I will write an update later tonight.
Photo of my Studio with a vase of the last of the autumn roses and spearmint from my herb garden. Photo of the ORBS
and photo of my Jonathan Livingston Seagulls.
It's pure "MAGIC".

The Recording sessions

The only way to begin this episode of events is: I am copying part of a letter I sent my dearest friend Diviana. Then as the weekend unfolds I will tell more.

I have been back in Queenstown about three hours. The weather Thursday and Friday was like out of some damned horror movie starring Dracula and Frankenstein as lovers. I kept thinking a major storm will cancel this project AGAIN?

I had scheduled a session with my Reflexologist for Thursday morning at 11:45 AM thinking that would be a most cleansing, relaxing ritual to experience before driving for two and three quarters of an hour to Invercargille.

My GOD! I COULD NOT FIND ANNA'S HOUSE! I have driven there time after time! She called me on my Vodafone wondering where I was. I told her I was out of my mind, someplace in Fern Hill, (Anna lives in Sunshine Bay!) She is so incredible and kind. She talks me all the way to her drive way. I float in. She says, "What is going on?" I told her "I feel fucked up!"

She went to work with her magic hands and angelic energy. I walked out feeling grounded. Pack the car, say goodbye to my family here at the house and begin driving. I drove through winds, sleet, rain, cold and dark clouds. The roads were a mess with branches blown across them, lost sheep and oil slicks. I made it into Invercargille.

Mind you, I have a real story to tell how I discovered this young man who is at The Southern Institute of Music. He is an absolute angel. I drove right to the motel within in walking distance of his house. His house was built in 1909 - 1912. Amazing Villa. Old wood, lead cut stained glass. His wife is an artist. Great art work on fabric, murals... The room we work in must have been a huge dining room or ball room. Crown moldings, amazingly high ceilings. I LOVE IT. Totally me.

Diviana had written me an e mail that was very special. I printed it and carried it with me. She knows how many times this project has been thwarted by powers beyond my control. Mike the Engineer drives me to the main studio at the Institute. He was all ready to go. I told him to give me a few moments alone to center and balance myself as I have felt all strung out... then I'd let him know when I was ready. I wanted to lay down the THEME FOR DIVIANA first before anything got in the way of that piece. (I had to make sure the piano would not crumble to pieces or the cables from the piano to the recording engineer's room did not explode... BIG MEDITATIONS TIME)

I tell you, I am living proof that there are Etherian Golden Drops of Magical Vibrational Elixirs that filtered down on my balding head, heart and hands. 1st "take" almost was perfect! 2nd "take" is a keeper. End of that composition. On to my next piece: WALKING WOUNDED. This was inspired by a piece of art one of my dearest friends channeled. It has everything in it from Eastern Philosophy to smoky dark bar rooms and a bit of Gypsy color... It went off like magic!
Everything flowed. I was exhausted by midnight. (I only record at night) We had set the times from 8 PM until midnight.

Last night we worked at Mike's house from 7 PM until 2:30 AM. I went to bed at 3 and awoke at 7:30 AM! Why so long? This is the hardest part of a recording. The Bells and Whistles... Strings, bass, percussion, pre mixing you name it. I have a CD.
A very rough draft. Mike will have to compress somethings, repair
glitches and smooth out all the icing on this cake. He can do it and will!

I cried driving home. There were times I felt this enormous force pushing me across the middle lane into an approaching car called head on fucking wreck. I was a mess once again. I am a different man for having gone through this ordeal. I actually believed I may be having a nervous brake down. God, do people still have nervous Break Downs? My grandmother's used to say their "nerves were acting up". I honestly had to fight in my mind and body to stay on the road. It was a war zone. I know the darkest side of things cannot take control of you IF you do not cooperate. I think I may have chopped the heads off of some ugly demons that have been living in my head and body for years.

I am home safe and sound and back with my MAC, my tunes, and my life beside the beauty of a lake, mountains and sky.
Autumn is on the edge... I do like Invercargille. Get this: This recording will be my last and I made it in the Southern Most City on Planet Earth!!! I stood years ago on the edge of a grassy cliff which dropped off into the ocean as I hiked around the southern most farm in the world. Yes, South America has Patagonia, but it 'aint a city. Invercargill is a large city and very 50's. People are kind and they remember you. The buildings are wonderful and shopping reminds me of when I was a young boy in Ogden Utah! More later.

Poetry, music, memories...

I love my I pod. Years ago I always had a tape deck with ear plugs attached to my body, no matter where or what hour of the day... Sound pouring into my ears feeding my mind, heart and body. Now this delicate thing called I POD is my newest love. I have over 1500 pieces of music on this little white playing card!

Today I listened to 5 of the Beethoven Symphonies. That is one hell of a lot of music! Like major overload, but not for me nor my musical heart, especially when one is walking or laying down...

Chopin is often given the crown of being the "THE POET OF THE PIANO". I do relate poetry to music. Both use the same elements of sound, harmony, timber, rhythm and color to paint emotions and pictures in the invisible. I think of the Grand Tetons when I hear
Beethoven. Therefore I am sharing a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay about Beethoven. Actually two of her poems. One is regarding my love for Beethoven another is for lost loves and memories of loves...

ON HEARING A SYMPHONY OF BEETHOVEN

Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace,
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.
Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,
With limbs a - sprawl and empty faces, pale,
The spiteful and the stingy and the rude
Sleep like the scullions in the fairy - tale.
This moment is the best the world can give:
The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.
Reject me not, sweet sounds; oh, let me live,
Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,
A city spell - bound under the aging sun.
Music my rampart, and my only one.

WHAT LIPS MY LIPS HAVE KISSED

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know it's boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

BTW a story will be written about the new recording. For nearly 7 years! What a story. I begin recording a week from today
IF I can keep focused. I have been given an angel for an engineer. This will be amazing in the fact of simply the journey getting my original music into a studio setting!

I think I will listen to Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert as I drift off into dream land. I have loved this man's piano since I was 20 years old.

A day in the Queenstown Gardens

A perfect day! A perfect 'balance' in everything. I spent most of the day walking around parts of the lake and in the Gardens.
Everything from weddings to bowling on the green. People soaking up the rays of the sun and some people just reading, sleeping
and then there are the one's busy texting on their phones.

Ross had my new chain for my "cross" and the arts fair was magic. Took Anne and Michael to lunch at "Flavors", then I departed on my walk about. Got home about 5:30, took a lay down. Dinner was on the patio with beautiful tomatoes stuffed with tuna salad made with fresh basil and rosemary from my herb garden. French bread and apricot jam I made yesterday. Nice wine and very strong coffee after dins.

Now I'll make some music at the keyboard, read and meditate before dream land beckons me into slumber. BTW, found the
lines from As You Like It by Shakespeare that I miss quoted yesterday. It is:

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE,
AND ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN,
MERELY PLAYERS;

THEY HAVE THEIR EXITS
AND THEIR ENTRANCES,
AND ONE MAN IN HIS TIME PLAYS MANY PARTS.

There! Even William believed in Reincarnation and Karma!