We decided to slot in an extra session as we were both suddenly free.
We have a certain amount of sessions booked, with a couple of extras as a contingency. I am fairly flexible, this project being pretty much the thing I am doing at the moment. Dan of course is much busier, so it seems sensible to grab opportunities when we can, just in case later on he has other opportunities and commitments.
So… in addition to the songs which require other musicians, there are two or three in my head that require just me and Dan, so on this occasion, that’s what we did. I have in my head that these songs will be varied in production, some very produced – manipulated, overlaid, filtered… many instruments and many players. Others will be less so, and one, that we recorded the other evening, is basically just me, unaccompanied. We got together at about 5pm, and worked through till after 11, pausing for a sandwich, coffee, and a packet of hobnobs, while we listened to what we had done.
Right at the beginning, Dan said he had an alternative idea for one of the songs… the one that I see almost as the theme for the project: “Invisibility is not a Super-Power” so he took it and ran… there was talk of Yoko, we had train sounds, my washing machine spin cycle. He played his guitar with a spoon… as one does…
He had that look in his eyes as I watched… you know, the one where you are totally engrossed, have stopped having any awareness of your surroundings, other than the thing you are doing. Flow… The spoon was drawn up and down the strings as his guitar lay in his lap. Some of the noises were sweet, some were not… it went from sweet to ugly in a breath. I had no idea where he was headed, and I don’t know that he did either. This was true play… imaginative, absorbed… wonderful to see in someone else, and great when you do it yourself. I think it is the first time I have seen it before my very eyes though since leaving my school job. I very very rarely see it in an adult. I wanted a photo of him, the guitar and the spoon, but didn’t want to break the spell.
I love that this work is free enough to allow for this to happen.
The joy of life is not in the STUFF, but in the way you live it.
