[C]2012 DOUG DUFFEY

A DAY AT THE MUSEUM- BERN

 

[C]2012 DOUG DUFFEY

[C]2012 DOUG DUFFEY

diaries, death, mourning, coping

i have not been blogging, lately- have not even been doing much Facebooking, either- have mostly been writing in my Moleskine journal which i bought in Dresden in august- [my paper fetish led me to them, and now i am hooked]- with my fave pen. Oddly enough, i began again this year [after mostly just typing 'diaries' on my laptop] to regularly write my journals; something I've done since the 70s, but have only been doing when traveling for the past decade.

the internet was spotty at best in zermatt, the 6 days we were there; same thing at Uetliberg [which meant no Magic Jack] - my Android phone worked, but i was not about to poke around on the phone w/my stylus to do emails or spend a fortune on long distance. 

i had every intention of working on [editing] a lot of the music i have done, and took new Bose speakers & new Sony headphones and did nothing. Nor did any collages or drawings, but ended up reading more of Ned Rorem's diaries, and writing in my own; when i wasn't sleeping all day into night, going to the gig, then going back to bed. high altitude & thin dry air only makes me tired. plus more bad news did not help.

Today: it's early morning- grey and cold- coffee & ciggies- staring blankly at the snow on the Jura, smoke floating from chimneys- out my boudoir window. i'm back in 'happy shiny people' zombie prozac mode, after going off it for a few weeks, cold turkey, [before during & after zermatt] and consequently, going off the rails. 

i was tired of not feeling- feeling but not REALLY feeling- not being able to process fully what i felt i should have, how i should have. As everyone who knows me knows, i was hit hard all of 2011 by loss, which has continued into 2012, with more family members and very close friends passing. i feel like i have been [as the hospice people said i would feel, after Mama died] "living in suspended animation for at least a year"; After the withdrawals & side effects of going off the prozac, i decided i would be better to continue in suspended animation until i can see my doctor and get weaned off, slowly. 

so many people have been so kind, considerate, and sent condolences and sympathy/empathy; and i really appreciate it. others act as if i should be 'over it' by now, and getting on with my life as if nothing has happened; get back to normal; [i don't even know what normal is anymore; nothing is normal anymore] and some have actually said "well, i didn't think you would take it that hard" - it hasn't even been a year since my father died [January 27] or my precious mama [April 14] =losing those two people who loved me unconditionally for all of my 61 years is not something easily gotten over; not to mention all the other family members and friends [who were like family to me] who have recently passed. it has changed me for life; i don't think i will ever be 'my old self' again- and am not sure who the new self will eventually be.

During Mama's illness i kept busy making collages; doing them in the living room on the couch/coffee table, while she watched tv. i HAD to stay busy; that was a way to be with her and try to take my mind off the reality. she always complained that i stayed "on that damned computer"- so, voila. After she passed i could do nothing. i was totally non functional for months. 

when i came to switzerland in august for a short tour, i at first channeled my grief into solo improvisational piano music - finding words to painful to cope with. normally doing anywhere from 5 to 10 pieces daily, for weeks. when i came over i began that - and experimenting with my old synth and Mac- multitracking and doing some solo stuff- i continued in Monroe, waking, writing and recording daily; and then again when i came back here in December 2011, which i have continued to do until last week. 

i slowly began to process, through lyrics, some of my feelings; starting with going out on the terrace w/my Hermes baby typewriter- typing up pages of  thoughts into lyrics then immediately going to the 'garage studio' and putting the music to them. writing/recording two songs "living again" and "the same thing" in august; i wrote one or two more in monroe; then more when i returned here- and now have enough material to release as a cd [although i plan to only make my music available as digital downloads] called "the mourning season" 

it was/has been cathartic and somewhat healing for me; as i hope it will be, for others. i still need to mix and fix- and master, etc- but it brought me back around to 'song writing' as it should be for me; not some made up bullshit to try and be hawked to some imaginary audience or market; but real feelings and emotions- from real experiences- created with NO preconceived thoughts of money or commerce; but only about 'the work'- which i plan to continue. if people like it, fine; if not, fine. the solo piano sessions and synth stuff will be waded through and edited when time permits; maybe vocals added to some. je ne sais pas. 

i have moved on to collage again, as a means of 'staying busy' and focusing on something other than emotional issues. [after my derailment]- it's amazing how many hours i can spend 'lost in space' working on one piece. reminds me of foto darkroom work, when i used to do it, i'd be printing photos then walk out to find it was daylight, and i'd spent the whole night with chemicals, film and paper, oh my. like coke in the 70s.

the 8.5" x 11" collages are easily scanned, which i like; the 18" x 12" not so, although i prefer the larger format. so i need to find a large bed scanner somewhere, as i think i am not going to sell my original collages anymore, preferring to sell them as photomontage [prints] 

My days here are growing short. i have not even begun to pack all the crap i brought with me, nor the things i have acquired while here. good thing i am a Medallion member and can haul 2 big suitcases back, for free; Delta baggage handlers have destroyed one of my suitcases- ripped both handles off- so for revenge I'll use it, just to torture them. payback IS a bitch. already dreading the TSA nightmare from hell called Atlanta. as Wayne says "I'd rather drink bleach" than have to go through there. 

The last band concert of this tour is January 21st at Mahogany Hall in Bern- and my pre birthday party. i love to perform there; its like my 'home club' in Switzerland. We always have a great audience- and it has a great grand piano, stage, acoustics, sound system & the molto fabuloso sound engineer & my old friend Martin Ritchards- and wonderful staff. after that, i have one private show on the 28th, then, its back to Louisiana to for a few months of 'hermit/monk' life: to work on myself, my music, art, photography; plant my gardens, be with my babies [my 4 cats] - deal with a lot of stuff i couldn't cope/deal with last year; and hopefully, as everyone says they will, things WILL get better...  and this is where i insert [hello, carl]  "always look on the bright side of life"

[C]2012 DOUG DUFFEY

good moron-ing- music babble

Switzerland December 2011

i woke at 7AM in darkness- & went upstairs to make coffee; Jackie & Albert had finished having tea and were leaving to go on tour. i again, began reading Ned Rorem's Paris Diary*, smoking while the coffee made.  i began it* yesterday while J was at the hairdresser & i felt like doing nothing; so laid on the couch/canape in the living room and read till J returned. she had to go out again later, so i took my book and went to bed at 8-ish to read; fell asleep around 9PM then woke at 3AM. had to gobble sleep & pain meds to try and sleep. bad sleeping habits, i.e., never having gotten my hours straight, i wake early and am ready for bed early- which is the total opposite of my nature. i am usually a night owl; working until dawn, then sleeping until mid day. 

but i feel drained from ALL this; and am NOT in the best of moods 90% of the time. it could also be from never going outside; never getting any exercise. [but i hate the cold/winter; just like i hate summer]- the sun has been playing hide and seek since 10AM, is out now- which is almost a reason to go for a walk, if only around the block. mais, non. but i am still suffering from/battling severe depression, which i have been ever since earlier this year...



i have also had equipment- and now software- problems which drove me over the edge. NOW my ACID music programs are not working right; and ACID 7.0 quit working altogether, and foolishly i had opened several work files in it; ACID 6 & 7 update and when you use them you cannot use older THE OLDER versions. you can open one from an older version into a new version but then, IF you save it, you're screwed if the new version screws up. so a lot of newer stuff i have written wont open- or will open, but there is no audio- because 7 is now dysfunctional and 6 wont read it. i am completely pissed. the only option would be to reconstruct the song from wavs, which i could never remember. i always save the files as an acid zip... which includes the files used; but they do not show up. so now i either have to pay 150-300$ for an upgrade or a new copy of the acid 7.0- OR lose the music; unless some hacker can send me a copy.


the ZOOM is here, but after having dealt with this new techno horror, which i tried dealing with all day yesterday and some of the day before, to no avail, i am out of the mood to even do any music. i've been using combinations of computers, software and hardware, and have saved files hither and yon... until i am in mental/emotional quicksand. i feel like i have reached total burn out. i need to find a good engineer to work with; do the music and let him do the mixing and fixing and filing, oh my. 

studio in the garage- Switzerland 2011

after having read Bill Evans bio, and now reading Ned Rorem's, i'm again questioning the meaning/purpose of any of it : music, art, career [or anything]- i'm not even sure what i want to do, anymore. reading the bill evans bio, i was certain- as i was before i read it, when i began doing all the improv stuff- that i wanted to simplify to the max- and only do solo piano recordings; no vocals; and the same with synth stuff. one track, fini. then i got into all the multritrack stuff, and 'beds' for songs, etc. that i decided while here to prioritize and work only on the vocal 'songs' [most of which i had created using Audacity then, stupidly did vocals [& added extra instruments, washes, sounds, etc.] in Acid 7.0. i figured before i go into 'avant weird jazz 'brown rice' experimental classical ambient weirdness music' i should release the vocal cd. that is semi off the chart unless i reconstruct the songs. now i am playing/recording a broken 1/2 strung, out of tune, mandolin... geez louise. Mandeville/Waldau here i come. so now i have got to re- prioritize. 

on top of everything else youtube has gone crazy/changed [upgraded] which now sucks... and for some reason i have 5 or 6 'big file' music 'albums' on my phone which i did not put there. [turn off the bluetooth] i am seriously considering becoming a quasi Luddite... getting a jitterbug  like my friend jimmy, [or better yet NO cell phone] and only using my magic jack & email to communicate; use the DR-1, the Zoom to record -maybe Audacity & Acid 4- and upload whatever to cdbaby via my laptop. get rid of Fecesbook and My-effin'-space, and maybe even my NEW website [which also blows]- despite the perks. 

i keep rolling lighting forgetting cigarettes in the ashtray, and leave my coffee till the soy milk clots in clouds. 3PM and already it's like it's 8PM- feeling like night- frost hangs in the air. i've wasted a whole day babbling in this blog, reading NR's diary, writing in my own, and feeling like i NEED to be hacking away on this mountain of music; but then feel like creating more new stuff. insanity, pure & simple. 

i didn't/don't understand in the Evans bio why he always recorded different versions of the same songs over the years; NR, like me, seemed to want to: just do it; be done with it; and get onto something else.
 
"we are what we are and because of it we do what we do"... and... "our gifts are not gifts, but paid for terribly"  Ned Rorem
 
Apparently, the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012- so i dont know why i worry about anything. the way things are, and are going, globally, it might not be such a bad thing; and/or as my cousin donna says, "this hasn't been THAT much fun" - Mother Earth/Nature is turning on her destructive, ungrateful, demanding, cannibalistic & spoiled demon spawn. 

oh hell... back to my out of tune 4 stringed mandolin
[C]2011 DOUG DUFFEY

waiting to zoom... and ranting

went to bed, exhausted, at 9:30PM after working on music all day into night- well, from the time i woke about 8 or 9AM- only to wake wide awake at 3:30AM- even though i had taken my prescribed sleep and pain meds before bed. this sleep disorder is getting ridiculous. so after several cigarettes and listening to the days work i had done, watching some polish television, and some more minimal editing etc, for 3 hours- i tried again w/ 1/2 the prescribed dosages of meds... and woke at 1PM euro time. that's more like it. whatever it takes. 

i have managed maybe 3 new 'symphonic' songs in the past 2 days [more over the week]- multitracked synth to Audacity- i tried using the piano/3 mics with the Cubase/Lexicon/Omega interface- to the Mac, which gave me fits- the computer kept freezing up- so i junked it for jt's laptop [which is newer than mine] which also froze when i was trying to do the piano/mic thing- so switched to Audacity & my 32GB flash drive- i record/save the stuff to the flash which i then put in my laptop and work with in Acid & Sound Forge- my music softwares of choice. 

i was so frustrated from rigging 'merde' ensemble/zusammen- that i went online and did research on various recorders- and think the Zoom R16 is gonna be the ticket for me. it can be a portable stand alone 16 track recorder, or i can record up to 8 tracks at once- then, like the flash drive- [but without the 1st 'recording' computer] i can take everything into Acid if i need to, to mix and add more stuff; there again, i probably wont need to. this will make my musical life 100% easier. 

due to losing songs/tracks whatever in the past due to computers freezing before i saved- or even if i did- for the past few years i have been recording all solo piano projects with my TASCAM DR1- which does NOT freeze- has 2 great built in stereo mics etc.  and when i am home in louisiana have been playing piano directly into my Aiwa minidisc, which also does not freeze up. i even had a computer built a few years back- as powerful as i could get- but haven't even used it much- did everything in acid except transferring my 4 tracks, for which i used Cubase, which like Logic for the Roland VS1680 sucked.

the ZOOM also means we can record the band LIVE on gigs, even though we normally do- but not with separation. or in the rehearsal room, which i prefer. i thought that was what the Roland VS1680 was going to be for, but there was just too much technical BS to deal with. it never synced up right, even after i bought a 750$ sound card/studio system [ages ago] - never could make Logic [which is now mac only] work with it to my PC. i should have just continued using my damned cassettes, minidiscs, and Dats and such:

have been wanting to do a cd playing live through a board, mixed directly to dat [with someone mixing as we go] for years- and as usual- like wanting to record with only room mics [like old Chess record/jazz records] everyone told me my ideas wouldnt be 'cd quality'- screw that- my favorite records were done w/either 2 room mics or live. i want a feel, a vibe- more than something pristine. 

one is only limited by their lack of imagination. i have proved that point by working with all this junk stuff i have been using on these last projects: [an old kawaii synth bought in a brockenstube [junk shop]; an OLD mac [one of the 1st G4s]- a downloaded version of Audacity: and getting amazing results.

This Zoom, from all i read seems more like an old 4 track recorder, or even my old cassette decks that i used to use, which had built in mics, which i used when i wanted to sit down and sketch or write a song. easy. easy is good. the idea of punching a button, doing a track 'live' then adding to it, w/o any computer and peripherals and BS, sounds too good to be true. 

i once had a very thin flat Sony cassette recorder [circa 1972] w/a built in mic- very heavy, well made- and one of the better memories of using it was in Hollywood, at Nicky Hopkins house, when i was house sitting for him & Dolly. i sat it on his grand piano in a huge empty room,  which had an equally huge window which looked out onto the hollywood sign. i wrote many songs during those 'house sitting sessions'- i'd love to have that machine again. guess i should check ebay- but then- it was not 16 track like the zoom, which does have 2 built in mics for the same purpose. but it was a beautiful machine. 

of course i have done so many projects in ACID- multi track stuff- since the 90s- and the stuff still sounds great- and i even did a lot of live playing directly into Acid/PC- piano, synth bass tracks, and did things with tommy miller and doug johnson on guitar and bass. even had friends send me files which i would 'chop shop' and use. but there again... it was one track at a time. the idea of 3 mics on the back of my upright- which i can mix- EQ etc EASILY- then work with them in Acid- sounds amazing- as well as being able to record the band live- and take the thing with me wherever i go. mais, deja parle. and being able to do the vocal live with the piano- something i normally only did in the studio in New Orleans & Monroe- when they HAD real acoustic grand pianos- OR on gigs here where there is a grand- but i only have this acoustic UPRIGHT here. [i need to check out richard byrd's place in NO asap]

so... 'waiting to zoom'- i will work more of these new symphonic 'song' tracks i've done and have on my laptop- until the zoom comes on tuesday. i have enough, from the last sessions in august & these last few days, for a cd- some already have lyrics & vocals, but the lyrics are the problem. everything i have written lyrically this year has been unbelievably [if understandably] depressing; which is why i have done so much 'solo piano' and 'solo synth' improvisational stuff. no lyrics, no voice; only music. 

the whole 'cd' of this new vocal material is very dark, albeit artistically satisfying [to me]. cathartic, maybe. thinking i might find some 'lighter' yet solid lyrics, i even went so far as to look at 1000s of old lyrics i have on hard drives i brought, going back to the early 2000s and even 1990s- and even some of my old notebooks i had scanned: from belgium, holland, berlin, switzerland in the early 90s- but even they are filled with doom and gloom; all very fitting for this music, but definitely not for everyone. almost nothing over 70 BPM [beats per minute]- i did some even slower in audacity

i remember my mama once asked me why all my songs were about death, sadness, doom & gloom [again] etc- and i think i said something like "because my life has not always been happy" or "i write from reality" or some such [all paraphrased] - SHE liked "rock & roll and jump & jive". she would NOT like this new venture, or the last. But this having been the worst year of my life to date, i might as well make this artistic/musical/personal statement; file it away, and hopefully/eventually move on to more upbeat material; but i think this "dark night of the soul" will be here for a LONG time, as it always has been, but mega magnified this year. 

TRADITIONAL which i recorded last year and didn't release until this year was almost portentious- as brother Wayne alluded to this year. i had been wanting to do a traditional 'album' for a long time; and there are still many ancient folk and blues and jazz songs want to do... and have already begun for TRADITIONAL 2.  but... they are not particularly festive. au contraire

blues nowadays is just another commercial product. albert moore once [early 80s] told me "the blues is black people's country music"... profound statement for the time- before country went BIG TIME commercial- more like equating the carter family to jimmy reed; george jones to skip james. but then i think traditional folk songs weren't all that happy; they dealt with hard times and sad times, and deep emotions; they were personal- and a way to deal/cope with things- and pass things down- not meant for the mass market; which i suppose is why i have always been drawn to them. 

3:42PM and already the sun is setting on the Jura... life goes back to black after a 1/4 day of gray. more coffee, more cigarettes. maybe a shot of Jameson... then on to create more multi track 'songs' w/the synth/audacity/laptop... or stick my DR1 behind my piano and play for a few hours... which has worked well thus far. some of the less experimental, less adventurous acoustic piano tracks from 2009 remind me of old celtic type folk tunes... 

ahhhh but a week in zermatt with the band and the zoom- i feel the solo cycle will mercifully cease for a while. its time to write record and release some 'rock & roll and jump & jive'and get out of the abyss

UPDATE: an hour later maybe
actually all the solo/improv stuff on both acoustic piano and synth are NOT DEPRESSING.... lol... more meditative, reflective and introspective... more like combinations of jazz, new age, blues, folk & classical. even the 'lyric' songs do have a sense of 'hope' to them... despite everything. just didn't want anyone to think that everything i was/am doing NOW was/is totally down and maudlin... (-:

and there ARE STILL the unfinished 1990s-2000s FUNK files i haven't even reopened to do vocals on, yet- i'm thinking socio political funk ala james brown in the funky president/payback era... occupy this

[C]2011 DOUG DUFFEY

cold, dark and grey

[C]2011 DOUG DUFFEY