a week of music
This past week was largely spent with my friend and frequent musical partner–in–crime Seamus Cater. We played shows on Wednesday and Friday nights, Wednesday at 21 Grand's new space in Oakland and Friday night at The Drum Machine Museum.
I think I was happier with our performance on Wednesday, we seemed to strike a good balance of quiet sound and understated gesture versus Friday night's slightly sort of over-the-top noisiness. I think we were just taken with the sound system, enjoying it for the fact that it could accurately reproduce the low frequencies we meant to make. Although, I have to say, Seamus' rhythmically granulated harmonica performance for the first ten minutes was entrancing and evocative, I hope he'll do that more. It reminded me of very early Steve Reich. His Supercollider patch, that I had a hand in developing early on, has grown into a lean and mean music machine, and looks great to boot.
I also finally got my dear friend R. to go to Cafe Hurghada with me. It is my favorite cafe in the whole city, with seating for about 4.
It's the kind of place where you can hang out with art-fags, Swedish tourists, and construction workers all at the same time. I don't know of any place like that, well, anywhere else in the world.
R. just got her first digital camera and is obsessively taking pictures of anyone and everyone. I love it, she's unafraid to take pictures of strangers without asking, just walking right up to them and snapping their picture. And with a digital camera, there's no chance of ever running out of images, but I wonder if that also lessens their value a bit when compared to analog cameras.