Victor McSurely

Monday, November 28, 2005

bridge into school me into library. big music assembly today. the woman had all of the children in the palm of her hands. me hiding, spying on bridge. if he'd of scene me it might have been a scene. she had them all singing from the first verse and had some very clever children's songs.
and i must say the school sang very well together. on the way home the first optomistic news on the news of late

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2005/11/20051128_a_main.asp

http://www.stirlingenergy.com/

these guys are prepared to change the country's energy source. fully prepared.

home, and at a remix of blueman number for studio publicity. sounding better... but many details. some tech breakthroughs blah blah blah. bridge home, and seems to not be feeling well. spent all afternoon coloring animals, except for a funny arthur t.v. break with yo yo ma and joshua redman, and much bickering amonst the kids over what type of music is best the was another story which i remember being quite funny as i was nodding off...oh yeah, arthur starts to get hooked on this baby show the love ducks, which are an obvious satire of the teletubbies and boohbahs. hilarious. jane finally home and another tiff with bridge who was finally at the end of energy. jane as well. after a long going to bed, jane and i had a more serious talk about having another child. took jane some effort to wrap her mind around how i look at struggles and conditions and don't get pessimistic. it seems one of my great challenges to integrate the (my) rational mind's functional but fragmentating capacity with inspiration and creation. how to stay responsible to conditions but not be bound by them.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

up before 5am with an upset stomach. my ability to digest certain kinds of cheese has practically ceased. got about a half hour sleep in after that before bridge woke up. morning with bridge at the bagel store. taught bridge another important word: intentional. talked about what it is like to do things without accidents. this is, for me, one of the critical qualities which discerns the higher world from the outer world - the occurence of accidents. it is a funny thing to do too, to define the word intentional, it's not quite the same as on purpose, and without accidents is a negative definition, 'just so' is close, 'just the way you mean it to be'.... this word is right up there with persistent in it's fundamental importance. went into work only to find that the shows were pushed an hour forward, but somehow, my alternate, robb, had shown up thinking he was doing the first two shows so no one noticed my lateness. took a nap on a couch at work, because it's more peaceful there than at home during the day, and after doing the holiday schedule (24 shows in 8 days after christmas....) with robb and dave came home for another hour with bridge. in finally for a good show. and home.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

got to sleep in today, but when it was over it still wasn't enough. fell into watchin gbull durham on tv. which is a very funny movie. impromtu playdate with gus and luke, but bridge was having a really hard time. at night we had a get together around a firepit in the backyard a wake for taylor's mom. people reading things and singing. jane did a good job getting the whole thing together and it was an experience to hear people talk about how they approach death and dying. something that's been a major interest of mine since i was little.

Friday, November 25, 2005

nice morning. the first time, i can remember getting to practice when waking up with bridge. he's getting very driven about learning to write as a way to learn to read. spent a moment going to down to get a hymnal for tomorrow's little get together for taylor's mom. our nieghbor has the same house as us, but they've modified it quite a bit, amazing to see. wrote down my thoughts about having another child. jane and bridge home from the dentist and we're off to get our christmas tree. of course for us, it means getting a tree to plant. the rest of the day spent planting a 7 foot spruce. landscaping done right is no small feat. after all, there are lines of force and power which run through everything. in the end the tree looks quite nice. off to work. pulled over for a broken headlight. a couple of days ago a trash truck going the other direction threw a small piece of pipe up off the road. it spun through the air across my lane, lined up end to end so it could carry the necessary mass, and hit my headlight dead center. i believe that if we had tried to make this happen 100,000 times we wouldn't have succeeded. well, the policeman who was quite nice explained to me that he'd just pulled over a black man and given him a warning so now he was pulling over a white guy. fortunately i don't think he was serious. at work the fatigue of planting the tree started to hit. but i pulled through, during the second show i fell into showing this video of this amazing christmas light display.
http://www.mypartypost.com/watchvideo/1033/Best_Christmas_Lights_Display_Ever
the last show at blue man was pretty amazing. the drummer micheal pretruccio is at a transcending station.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

thanksgiving. ok, bridge very enthusiastic for me to get up and play, but i took the chance to sleep in. unfortunately most of the extra time was spent dreaming about trying to catch a mouse with my bare hands. making the thanksgiving day lasagna. and off the thanksgiving at the cort's. alex is bridge's friend and his mom julia invited us to her family's dinner. she is a producer for the nova tv show, and alex's dad is the man in charge of excavating the pyramids in egypt or more truthfully at this point the place where the builders of the pyramids lived. julia's folks are old leftist catholics who have an interesting story and a fairly large family. they were all impressed by my family history. when we got back from a trip to the playground bridge saw the turkeys on the table and burst into tears saying really upset that birds were being eaten. super hero mommy stepped in and explained they weren't wild turkeys, which somehow made a bit of a difference. we played a rather bizarre game called 'up jenkins' which they were all convinced was an ancient game, though i'm not sure that the grandfather didn't invent it to keep all his children busy. somehow i managed to deceive the other team twice. struggling a little to say the right thing for jane who hasn't had the easiest day. a quick google reveals that up jenkins is a real game, though there were several modified reveals of the coin they'd come up with.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

up early. bridge working at his new desk, where he proceeds to work until 10:20 stenciling letters and shapes. visit from gus and luke, and they all fall into to this indescribable 4 yera old energy vortex of chaos and play which lasts long after i have to go to work. first in to co-op with jill (mother of gus and luke). on the way it strikes me how close we are, and yet how there is much we might never talk about, and partly never need to talk about. in some ways this unusual friendship is just about being together and the help that comes is just through that companionship, unlike many friendships i've had where there is a focus on figuring out personal problems and helping through problem solving. partly there are necessities about the relationship which are supporting what's between the children, which does seem remarkable, and has sustained now for 2 and half years. work was long and loud, but promising.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

woke up and had coffee, got bridge into school only to remember that it was the day when parents come to watch the class. there were all kinds of parents there. it was a circus. bridge had a great time. until i had to leave that is. worked in the library and thought for a moment about becoming a librarian. paid some more bills on the way home, and then worked around the house. got bridge and went to see the snowy owl. home and play, and then cooked dinner, which was, as i had set myself, my first meal of the day. it was interesting to try and use the hunger as a reminding force. helpful. though i saw how any action and any non-action can become egotism. aligned my mixdown deck, practiced and sat.

Monday, November 21, 2005

slept a fair amount today. somewhat drained. taught bridge the word persistant. probably as an important a word that exists.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

awake at 6:30 by sad bridge, his cousins having abandoned him in the night for their mother downstairs. trying to teach his heart one of life's major lessons: "it's not about you." much bumping about and leading the circus through various breakfast and morning needs then a little nap and then in to the unitarian church. a pretty genius service by lilli nye on thanksgiving, and the gee's bend community on the alabama river (google it). very heavy and whole. home and a little nap but not before a major incident at the discovery that i had accidently destroyed a jane's gift for her friend that she'd worked so hard on. up and a bass lesson for a friend and into work for another heavy day at work. fortunately it was about resolution of all the loose ends and spade work from friday. plus the sound man made major improvements to my monitor sound and for the first time in weeks i could hear what i play. so things seem now on course. after work i had dinner at the arpeggio cafe down the street from where we used to live, full of personal memories, morninings with baby bridge, and the counter woman who used to give us bagels still the same. took a chance to go over cambridge center for adult education to see if a guitar circle course would fit in. small circle tonight, with a guest observer, but things seemed to go well. metis, this idea from peter kingsley's book 'reality' is really the best description from where i currently sit of what it takes to run and work in the circle.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

visit from sister in law family day. exciting stuff for bridge, and a bit of a tornado in the house, with the 3, 4 and 5 year old all together. trip to the science museum, with me winding up watching the kids a lot while the sisters catch up. home and more kid sitting and watching acted version of madeline, which was impressively entertaining. off to a much less contradictory show at work, and then to the glenn's big 4-0 birthday party, a performance by the guitar quartet new england. not too shabby, though a little worse for ware (speaking to my own part.) afterwards i sat in with glenn and shaun, which was again not too shabby though a little worse for ware. spent some time listening to the rerelease of little feat's waiting for columbus in the car. i am somewhat entranced by this era of this band right now. their time feel the complexities and subtleties of the arrangements, and the flow of the songwriting. and am also noticing this quality that tony was mentioning at the course, which was about the attention given to the end of notes. i wonder if there is an acting term for the ability to end phrases and parts well.

Friday, November 18, 2005

up to get bridge into school, him being more contrary than usual. home and then a call that he'd thrown up a little, but wasn't feeling particularly sick. ok, then. off to dr. chang for tui na. lots of work on the skull. at times i thought his hand were actually going into my skull. very strange. he did some very intense work on my sinuses as well. which was good because the sinus condition i've been carrying around for over a week now left in 3 hours.... home for brief interrupted nap and off to band meeting where the latest travesties and misprojections created absolutely thick and poisoned conditions for the nights work. i'm curious to hear the show. at the end of the night and judging by the crowds response, there is little way to be sure how the performance actually came off. did what i and the other musician's go through have anything to do with what came out? and what does that have to do with what people get? it's bizarre. and probably there is some kind of lesson to learn from this repeated experience. many more heavy talks and meetings before and after, much sense of meddling and hoping i'm helping, damned if you do damned if you don't. home to wife and sister watching some chick flick and now for this new chinese herbal concoction.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

still not feeling great. going to see the chinese tui na doctor tomorrow. big grocery trip and getting bridge and then getting the house in order. listening to the the cocteau twins, i find it one of those bizarrely intoxicating combinations: listening loudly to 'pearly dew drops drops' and 'akie guinea' at dusk, in the fall, in massachusetts. it's one of those things that all aspects have to be there (and it's better on vinyl). i'm not sure what it is, it's as though the music and the forces of nature all fit together.... into work to find fellow band mates somewhat drained. actually had to go away during the break, got still more focus on moto perpetuo intro, and am feeling excited about it. current quote that haunts the days: "The obstacle to this vision (of the central mission of Jesus) is our false conception of love as a polar force of attraction, similar to the attraction between two bodies carrying opposite electric charges or between the poles of a mganet. Attraction implies repulsion. As unlike charges attract, like charges repel. If the love beween man and God were of such a character, it would imply that man and God stood at opposite poles and could never be united without losing their love for one another. Divine Love does not derive its power from separation but from union. It is not fullness but emptiness, not Being but the Void." -J.G. Bennett "the Masters of Wisdom"

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

up and feeling quite achy after a long night's sleep. got the car through inspection and close to having all the moto perpetuo intro memorized. potted a plant and into work, telling all the stories of introducing bridge to laurie anderson at the airport, and his phoneticism of that rock band "the two 'oos' ". he kept telling me about this band the two oos, and that we had their record. and then when we finally got homehe showed me the u2 cd.... work went ok. it's not the easiest show to play superbly.