Wednesday 28th of February, 2001
A flurrying sort of day, dealing with minor things like picking stuff up (the last of the debris from Saturday's recording), ironing and vacuuming.
For lunch I start on the part of The Lake of Soup that I put in the fridge, rather than freezing it. Eat My Lake of Soup has the ring of the title of a good but brow-furrowingly obscure record. By some eastern european postrockers, perhaps.
I try to send Rich Barnard an e-mail with the details of the Bread and Roses gig in April. I get it all written and set up with maps included and everything and, just before I am about to send it, the computer crashes. Hum. Decide that at the moment this is the Game of Soldiers for which That should be Buggered. For dinner I finish the lake of soup (so it wasn't that big a lake, after all. Serpentine, rather than Windermere) with some bread. Very nice, but I worry that perhaps I'll fill myself up to much to do any good at the VAC.
Drag myself out of the house and onto the Northern Line to get there before 7:30. Just about make it. I've got here often enough now that it begins to feel like home - it's a nice thing, something that only Bunjies has afforded me in the past, somewhere like home that I can venture out from to more dangerous situations and then retreat to. There's always an interesting mix of people - sometimes, perhaps, too interesting, but that's not their fault.
I play Obvious and State of the Art in its new finger-picking incarnation. Obvious goes down very well - because it is so long (actually I timed it and its five and a half minutes, which isn't that long, really) and such a torch song, I often worry whether I'll get away with it, and playing it first is an extra risk. It certainly feels like the audience are paying attention, and it gets a huge applause thing. State of the Art seems low energy by comparison, but I'm doing these songs to find out which ones work and which do not, so that's alright. With tonight and Saturday, I feeling more and more confident about the new material. I just have to finish it, that's all.
It's a very good night, actually, even though I have an annoying habit of deconstructing people's lyrics. I don't tell anybody, because that would be hugely cruel, but nonetheless. Before I go on, there's a chap whose song has the refrain "Freedom Flies", which I'm hearing as "Free Dem Flies" (I will not rest until those flies are free). Someone else uses the line "When I'm looking through your eyes, babe" to which I can't help but append "I can see your brain". It isn't fair, and I'd hate for someone else to do it to my lyrics. So it's bad karma, too.
But much fine playing, and one or two moments of real intensity - Tessa's second song, for example, Article Dan. Some other people whose names I forget. There is a flamenco (or flamenco style - I spot some Tarrega and possible Baden Powell in there, too) guitar playing. A spot of a capella singing. Someone who introduces his little sister who will "help him out", who turns out to have a big enough voice for both of them, thank you very much.
Someone reports that it is snowing outside. Snowing! No wonder it's cold. Out into the snow (not settling, obviously, so actually a lot nicer than rain to deal with) and home, cocoa, bed. The usual stuff.