Victor McSurely

Friday, December 16, 2005

more home time with bridge. some good play, recording drums with b in the basement, and then also doing a mural with b in the basement, while listening to 'love cannot bear', the new frippertronics album, which is quite amazing. at night j and i slip out to see this new movie called 'one'. which these guys produced and wound up getting some great teachers as well as ordinary people off the street to speak about life's big questions. jane's teacher, llewellyn vaughn lee figures prominently in it. and there are some terrific moments with robert thurman and ram dass. one quote: ram dass is asked why there is so much depression and after some reflection in a slow voice he answers,"because the game is not as much fun as we thought it would be." the whole event leads me to ponder further what i am to do with my knowlege and understanding for those who are seeking. also brings up the question with jane about how necessary is it in our parenting for her to share in that knowlege. after some very slippery driving we have a nice short dinner with ellen driscoll, a fantastic artist..

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

jane furious at me for not waking her up. bridge into school, and i spend an hour and half recovering. a couple of hours cleaning out the garage and moving the outdoor funiture in and i find a message that b's school has called and he's got a slight fever. he's home and j's off to work. we roll through the afternoon, this and that, waves of the fever, and then i'm off to work. one of my better shows in a while. some christmas shopping and home.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

played a new game we picked up yesterday with bridge. it's about dinosaurs and has true and false questions and multiple choice. interesting to watch the gears turn. he's never thought in those kind of catagories before. he's quite good at the game. actually there was only one question of all the cards he got wrong. on the way home from school he asked," what does 'false' mean?" beside the obvious 'opposite of true' i tried to explain how sometimes things that you first figure out to be true turn into something false because you learn more about them. like the iguanadon's thumb, which was first taken to be a horn on his nose. i asked bridge what the things were that were 'true': trees, flowers, mountains, the earth. and then i asked if the sun was true. he said it wasn't because it came and went, but then we thought about how it comes and goes in the same way, and concluded that it was special kind of true.

Monday, December 12, 2005

bump bump bump, all kinds of maintaining taking place, most of it taking several wrong turns before the right turn is even accessible. and therefore things take a long time. cars and shoveling snow. bridge really tired, we're figuring out he needs to sleep more somehow. jane also tired, and myself as well, we're figuring out we need more sleep.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

into church to cover jane's volunteer spot for sunday school. did a pretty good job. i enjoy relating to kids. we made birdfeeders out of pinecones and peanut butter and birdseed. and then i was a tree for the kids to play birds hiding under. and then i called simon says. which thanks to frank sheldon i have a profound appreciation of. it's so great to watch children play it. they are astonished that they can discriminate between the two kinds of instruction. as they listen they are simply amazed that they can pay attention and know that if they do they will know if they are being tricked or not. and it's like this is the coolest thing ever. out shopping trying to find the food that will be best for this body now. and then realizing that i'm real low on blood sugar. home and a whirlwind of activity to prepare for jane's return, and for bridge, who is celebrating his 4 1/2 birthday today. in for a show, which was bizarrely sloppy by the band as a whole, and yet still spirited and appropriate. (the turntable still working) and then rushing home to be daddy (and somewhat a husband), and then back out again to talk with mary beth and glenn about this idea i have for opening up the circle to trail attendence.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

another day of somewhat sleeping in, though with the usual dreamful sleep. after some bumbling about i finally head out to get the car's wheels aligned and check out the new speakers i want to get for the dressing room at blue man. much back and forth about getting the right things. i want it to be right, have some good sounding equipment. ah yes good sounding equipment, such an obsession these days, maybe a retreat from the constant noise which surrounds me. the speaker work and i get them and back to the nearby car and head out to the return the video's when i notice they've overlooked adjusting the steering wheel. "bring it in at your next convenience, so i turn around and head back."the guy who works on that just went home, you'll have to come back monday." hmmm what's going on these days? i'm thinking it's pretty amazing. well. a quick stop home to get the power amp, and i'm in to work to set up the new vinyl friendly system. (all obtained for $45) and hooray it all works. and it sounds good. i'm growing more convinced of the bizarre and eccentric theories that analogue sound carries more musical power than digital. does it more concretely carry the psychic fingerprint of the artist? is it the total harmonic distortion quotient? or perhaps its all mumbo jumbo.... well then there's the fact that the shows were both amazing. home, and more frittering about. before sleeping again.

Friday, December 09, 2005

jane and bridge off to nyc/granny's, so i get to sleep in a bit. then tragic comedy of errors. i awake and there is 4 inches of snow and more coming down. i run down to get the steering aligned on our recently repaired car thinking that the snow will keep people away, but actually it just drove people to show for snow tires. on the news at the tire shop they are saying the snow will clear up in two hours. i head out calling the stage manager to be sure the workshop i have to get to is still on, and he tells me yes. realizing i have an extra 5 minutes before the long drive in the snow into work i stop in the cool thrift store there. i head in not realizing khaled has called me back on the cell phone i left in the car. when i get to work after driving in the snow for 50 minutes he tells me he left me a message that the workshop was cancelled. well figuring that the snow was going to ease up in about an hour i waited around a bit and headed out. well, actually the snow got worse, blizzard conditions i spend an hour and half trying to get home, roads a dead standstill in every route home. i have to wind up leaving the car in jamaica plane and taking the subway back to work so i can make it in on time for the show. after the show screnci and i try to make it out to see syriana but the roads are all clear and people have made it in for the movies. some pinball instead and then home to find the drifts in the driveway and sidewalk are about 14 inches. shovel shovel shovel.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

spent a bit of time replying to an email from an old friend, anita demas, someone i've known from first grade whom i went to school with all 11 years i was in school, whom thanks mainly to the internet has reconnected somewhat. she was letting me know what she found at our high schools 20th reunion. her's is a great perspective as she remembers the elementary school world. it's in interesting effect of the internet and technology that our history stays closer with us. there's no more just moving to the next town and starting over. perhaps now people will start to become accustomed to people reinventing themselves without going away. high school wasn't much socially for me in relation to my class as i was firmly embedded with the outsiders during the fallout of my half brother, gus, dying and my parent's divorce. dec 7th is gus's birthday. for years afterwards my mother and i would go and plant bulbs down on the potomac river near where he died. i believe there are so many down there one or two still make it up come spring. found out my car will take a long time to fix, and might be totalled, and as i started to see what i might be able to get should it be so, i got a little depressed. over to gus and luke's for a playdate. the highlight being flashlight hide and seek, which is just hysterical 3 four year olds hunting around in the dark with their flashlights for their parents. you can really get a glimpse of what a traumatic position the soul undergoes coming down here, and the fun that can be had. home and the little matters, and an hour at the intro. not one complete pass. damn. i'm going to have get serious.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

still a lot of resistance, but i managed to pull off about 4 hours of personal practice and get a few things done around the house. the intro is coming along and i think i actually made it all the way through from memory once. the drill to play this piece from memory is reminding me of some of the buddist exercises of recreating an intricate drawing of the buddha in the mind's eye. been thinking more about this notion that the ability to discriminate between impressions effects the ability to remember. the corelation between meditation and memory (and therefore rememberance) takes on another aspect seen in this light. interestingly watching television and especially commercials seems to work against cultivation of memory. in fact it wouldn't surprise me if there is some intentional hypnotic or self forgetting effect of sensory overload used to insinuate the need to consume the product that takes place....

Monday, December 05, 2005

another not great day. similar pattern to the day before. some good progress on moto perpetuo, but up too late to make it. watched the new willy wonka, and was actually quite impressed.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

got to sleep in a little and then up to help with sunday school at the unitarian church. bridge loves making things and that's what they do there. the woman who ran our group was fairly sharp and i seemed to do well enough getting the new kid to find an angle to participate. during the church lunch i notice how vulnerable i am to my impressions of people, similar experience the night before at work, am having this very strange sense of seeing the whole mechanism of a person when they are talking to me... over to the wheeler's nice house in the new snow, bridge having more fun with his friends while i help andrew on his new bass. home and nap while b and j go out to a birthday party. jane is exhausted, and t.v.'s out drawing me in... afterwards a little practicing on moto perpetuo, which i can easily imagining working on for 2 more years. 3 or 4 minutes of music.... it's been a couple of months now, and i'm still enchanted with the opening bars.... after this i became drawn into a letter from a member of the circle, and wound up staying up quite late pondering it's significance.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

long day at work, very difficult to do the shows. no extra energy whatsoever. fortunately i was inspired enough to take a shower before the second show. this was a big relief, as i started to get sore from my long bikeride home in some pretty steep winds the night before.

Friday, December 02, 2005

some good work happening in studio, but tape machine still sounds like it needs to be demagnetized. fixed washing machine turned out a really bad noise was justa drywall screw stuck in one of the holes in the bottom of the machine, felt rediculously proud of myself for accomplishing this. decent show at work. though feeling pretty spent.road bike into work and it took longer than it does in the summer. mainly because it is darker, but also because it is colder. stopped by shari's house to borrow a demagnitizer from danny. their son, Free, is now 12 1/2 and reminds me a great deal of myself at that age. was finally able to figure out that my demagnitizer is dead and that is why things haven't been working right....

Thursday, December 01, 2005

chores and tasks trying to remember... out for groceries. shopping on an empty stomach. it sometimes amazes me the options there are to eat. and that bread and cercus is so pleasant. still i usually buy the same things.... good, necessary further work on moto perpetuo almost have the intro in the fingers, but it's at times a kind of tongue twister and even the intro memorization is substantial, it will be an experience to move on from the base camp up into the rest of the piece. i heard somewhere that people with good memories are also better at excluding unnecessary information in their day to day life. i wonder about this. some work about the studio ironning out the bugs. and then a straightforward show.

wednesday: mostly slept today, though i did manage to get the garbage out in time. out to look for shoes for bridge's growing feet, and then an all too rare moment, jane and i out alone together. checking out the harry potter, which was good enough, but probably would've been better as a mini-series. it is astonishing though how much energy and production have come out of those stories.

during the tuesday morning routine of getting bridge off to school my nieghbor calls. to say that someone just rear ended my car and is driving off up the street. fortunately while i'm out inspecting the damagethe young man (probably about 16) comes down the street with his nieghbor. he's really distrought. well, bridge who's been really upset about going to school is thrilled, it's a day off. though after a bad night's sleep, i'm wondering how i'll make it. well, turns out to be an ok day, we write a few songs. and spell out a list of all musical instruments. at night jamie edwards 40th birthday. spend most of the time talking to steve wilkes and jenny fordham. steve is just back from a long stay in japan studying the cutting edge of digital percussion. jamie's just back from his tour with amy mann. turns out to be a late night. jamie had good time. i had a nice exchange about where i'm at with my music carreer with shari. she's really rolling now with one cd out and another starting to cook. i'm in a long recovery from the sweepers it seems. partly from exhaustion, and partly i think because of the type of town boston is and type of person i am, though it couuld be that things are changing.