I must get away more often! I disappear for a week in the snow, followed by a few days in the studio, and when I emerge, blinking into the light, everything has changed. The guestbook is filled with discussions of "What is Life", advising me that I am a living, breathing entropy-busting machine (a fact my wife and Robert might both dispute given my ability to create mess out of order and a strange penchant for growing biological cultures in old tea cups) - the news pages are filled with that well-known three LP set "The Vicar over America" - and my inbox is filled with yet more speaking invitations swooping in. I think there are still a few unscheduled days around the 26/27th, so keep them coming, I say.
And those on the East Coast need not feel unloved. Once I have finished experimenting on the relaxed hippies of the West Coast, and learnt my craft, I shall return later in the year to give you the benefit of all that I have (hopefully) learned.
In between, I have been paying for my holiday, as we all do, by doing "stuff". For the royalties, I needed to calculate the publishing splits, on new releases. So you may be interested to know that the Starless boxed set contains 516 minutes of improvisations, 185 minutes of Starless, 161 minutes of Exiles, 158 minutes of the Night Watch and 150 minutes of Easy Money. Or not! Oh and I missed out the 297 minutes of Fracture. Fortunately, I did not have to listen to them all in real time, as otherwise the 145 minutes of Lament might just have done for me. Although, as I mastered the whole boxed set, and you listen to everything at least three or four times, that does mean that I have spent about 500 minutes, or eight hours listening to nothing other than Lament. Hmmmm! And I wonder why I’ve been feeling strange recently. Lamentable.
"We begin by doing nothing.
Then, we move to doing something."
