Expectations

I'm in a black mood today. Things are not flowing as I had planned. I was up too bloody late last night blogging and now I am sleep deprived. Perfect setup for my day and my 1067 gig tonight.

The sole bright light of the day so far was dropping off Kate Hammett-Vaughan's belated birthday present. I got a set of 6 Kate Smith lp's - eBay, baby! Our Kate is married to Guy Smith, so the connection goes without saying. Three of the lp's feature the same photo of Kate Smith, with red hair and a black dress - too perfect. My favourite album is one of those three - The Great Kate, where she belts out jazz standards. Kate and I have known each other for 30 years and I love her to pieces. She is an inspiration for me to this day, but she still hasn't hired me for her band, the bag.

I expected to have a warm and fuzzy Banff send-off lesson with Stan Karp today. One of his true gifts is the intuitive ability to zoom in on the really serious stuff, usually the stuff that you haven't really worked out between lessons. Ask any of his students - sometimes he'll zero in before you play your first note.

First we discussed the Hard Rubber Orchestra show last Saturday night. He is a huge admirer of Phil Dwyer's playing. He hadn't read the Sun review, and I told him how I felt about the show and that I may have stirred some shit up on the jazz forum. His comments were directed at reviewers in general, but obviously meant to include me too. "People have to take the stick out of their asses", is the gentle way he put it. He enjoyed the Cdn Idol bit, saw it as a laugh between the heavy pieces. "Who's got the right to tell artists they can't have some fun during a performance?" He's right, as usual. Isn't that exactly what I wrote about in my previous post, having some fun onstage? I went to the HRO show with the expectation to have my world rocked, and just having it shaken wasn't good enough for me. I've got to lighten up.

Time to play. I was expecting that he was going to share one of his unique insights, something that would easily open up the world of Afro-Cuban music, but he just zeroed in on the very fundamental things that we have been covering since the start of the year. I didn't have them down cold and he worked me over as a result.

The message was pretty loud and clear - I had better get my basics down and really focus on the music. And really that's what it's all going to be about for the next two weeks, not hanging out with some old and new friends, not the jokes, nothing else but the music.

I had been expecting to be over and done with our financial restructuring well before I left for Banff. At the very least our mortage renewal, where we're taking out some equity to retire our other debts, was supposed to be complete today and I was planning on picking a nice fat cheque this afternoon. I called our notary today only to be informed the soonest it can happen is next Wednesday. This process has literally been dragging on for months and I am sick to death of it. The last thing I wanted was to have this on the back of my mind for the next two weeks.

I expected to have this blog up to date by now. I still want to write about my last time up at Banff in 2004, but that's just going to have to wait.

I've set myself a half-hour limit writing this thing today and time's up.