Veda Hille

As this post appears i am arriving in london! i love the magic of time stamping. London is the home of bedlam, of course. The Bethlehem Hospital was one of the earliest and longest running mental hospitals in the worlds. i mean the world. The word ‘bedlam’ is a quick version of the word ‘bethlehem’. i believe the hospital building is now the war museum, and i’m hoping to get a chance to go there this trip. they had an interesting use for photography in the early days at bethlehem hospital. they would take your photo when you were Crazy, and then again when you were Sane. my god, i’d love to see those photos.

this is the version of bedlam from silver. it’s the same performance as on auditorium, just a different mix. you can go watch the video for a very different version of bedlam on myspace. and now i promise i will never post about bedlam again. (Continued)

 bedlam: Download

another song from silver. a kind of fake eastern european wedding song paired with lyrics from a book of songs for jewish soldiers. there’s another version of this song that i reworked for the leaky heaven circus production of Birthday Boy in 2003. that one has lyrics taken from the Song of Songs. maybe i’ll put that on the new album (recording in april 07, probably for release in the fall), since i have a kind of biblical theme going on. just warning you. (Continued)

 comrades: Download

oh darlingen (that is a german word that i made up a few days ago) we are having such a good tour! thanks to all who are coming out. every night i am caught in some ecstasy of music and good company. and today i had a lovely walk in bremen. the ipod is playing the perfect shuffle mix. belle and sebastian into john cale into flaming lips into wax mannequin into phil ochs. sometimes it is so great to live in this future. (Continued)

Since there are less treats on the touring blog, i’m post-dating this post to give you something to look at. This is the video for Bellyfish, a big production in “rock video style”, directed by Robert Cuffley with lots of components by my name is scot, the artist who did the album cover for spine and who was a huge influence on the whole album. That’s one of his installations that i’m writhing around in, and i believe some of his bandages are on my arm. The girl is Wynn, one of my piano students at the time. A good player and a good sport too. I can’t remember where we got the baby pigeon.

(Continued)

good morning! i have awoken in berlin, after a sound sleep, and have lingered an astonishing hour over breakfast. this is one of the pleasures of travelling, the unexpected pockets of time. as usual, i have stockpiled some new yorkers for travelling (the magazine, not the dynamic people) and wanted to draw your attention to an article about novelists by milan kundera. this is a great piece of writing about the relationship of a writer to her work. it is in the october 9 edition, if you can find it take a look. here is a sentence that gave me pause: “This is the novelist’s curse: his honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania.” and here is a paragraph that made me laugh out loud in the hotel cafe:

I was nineteen when, in my home town, a young academic gave a public lecture; it was during the first months of the Communist revolution, and, bowing to the spirit of the time, he talked about the social responsibility of art. After the conference, there was a discussion; what I remember is the poet Josef Kainar (a man of Blatny´s generation, also long dead now), who, in response to the scholar´s talk, told this anecdote: A little boy takes his blind grandmother for a walk. They are strolling down a street, and from time to time the little boy says, “Grandma, watch out – a root!” Thinking she is on a forest trail, the old woman keeps jumping. Passersby scold the little boy: “Son, you´re treating your grandmother so badly!” And the boy says, “She´s my grandma! I´ll treat her anyway I want!” And Kainar finishes, “That´s me, that´s how I am about my poetry.”

-Milan Kundera in the New Yorker, Oct 9 2006 (Continued)

Here’s another song from silver, the limited run ep that sold out years ago. This is one of my favourites, and co-written with one of my favourite people that i’ve never met. Ove Karlson is a great swedish musician and writer, and I unwittingly stole this music from him. I heard it on an album of folk music, i didn’t read the liner notes and assumed it was traditional, and wrote words for it. When i was putting silver together i went back to the folk album and realized that in fact the music was written in the 1980s. I promptly contacted Ove to explain myself, and lucky for me he is one of the warmest people on earth. We have since become close friends over the email and the snail mail, and I hope very much to visit him on his island in sweden one day. I imagine him as a large and friendly cello playing bear.

As this post appears we are landing in Berlin! (Continued)

 Nostalgia Song: Download

Here is a picture of P. Kleinenstein trying to get cell phone reception in a shack in the woods. The FitsHille attack on the islands last weekend went marvellously well. Our gig on Lasqueti deserves special mention, as it included outdoor showers, an excellent mexican meal, a fine old piano, a woodstove shaped like a dragon, and late night whiskey+brut fitta+queen. Thanks, off-the-grid folks!

And now I am fully engaged in preparing for the european/uk onslaught. As mentioned on the tour page, Barry is off gigging with Neko, Ida, and Fellows (busy boy), so we’ve lured vancouver drummer Skye Brooks into the band. He and Martin and I have been spending a bunch of time in the garage getting ready, and I have to say it’s pretty exciting. Nothing like new blood to get the old blood heated up. I think we’re actually going to rock. Are you ready, deutschland? (Continued)