News
performances of pieces from ‘piano mixture’
Two original compositions by Mix Amylo, from her book Piano Mixture, are performed here:
Francesca playing ‘the lion pan’ – click here
And Owen playing ‘half-sock’ – click here
Piano Mixture – book of 21 original compositions for solo piano
Morning Coffee
That bond. It has grown, jumping from childhood neediness over the gap where I found my own path, to land on a couple of decades of something truly special. And that bond has tightened during these strange times, its knots rewound into new configurations, holding firm all that was, that is.
Conversations about nothing much become the everything. The weather is first on the agenda, to my amusement and incredulity that it is always the answer to ‘how are you?’: how warm or mild it is, how sunny these last days, we’ve been so lucky here in England since it happened, how is it there, oh, raining, really?
The weather is just the entrée. We delve into other subjects after that’s been taken care of. Some days he is upbeat, chuckling about his cats or mine, engrossed in a new painting, boosted by hearing the voices of those close to him more often than usual, at least down the airwaves if not in the same room. Surprised at how little time he has to do all the things he wants to do every day, even though he can’t go out. A sentiment shared by most people on the planet right now. On other days he is uneasy, quietly stressed, mildly depressed, again like us all, as the unknown stalks us. I try to make light of things, though I can’t see the light that clearly, chat about people we know, dream of futures. ‘When..’
How important it is. How vital, this calling during morning coffee, its aroma mingling with our chat and filling the spring air, hearing him say hold on, let me just have a sip of my drink, listening to his slurp and his pleased ‘mmm’ as he swallows. Touching minds, checking in, reconfirming. Hoping. Hoping for an end to this enforced game of solitaire. Never much to tell, but we tell it anyway. Many times, in varying formations. And so. And so it goes on, a daily reaching out, through half of March and nearly all of April. I am comforted, as is he, by knowing the other is there. Making this moment feel better. Making our –
But. Then. The end comes suddenly. The start of the end during morning coffee, soft taste turning bitter, my throat burning, the handle of the mug freezing. I don’t know yet that. That it is the end. Yet. I am afraid. The voice I have known. Known and heard since birth is. Is wrong. Its tone is odd, its pace slower, its. Its vocabulary confused. Slurred. It was. It was the last sighting of its sound for me. I think I. I think I told him I loved him, after asking him to call 111. I hope I did. I –
The slow confusion gradually. Stills. And. Only hours after. After the smell of Arabica leaves the room the voice stops. The silence. The silence shifts our world. Across land and seas, two thousand kilometres away from me, it stops. The voice that spoke five languages. Just. Stops. Just –
Over the next few days the diagnosis, also confused at first, clarifies. That brain. That brain that wove the twelve notes into piano sonatas and string quartets, that could tell you how many letters were in a word immediately after you said it, that brain that still loved to learn, that wanted to add a sixth language to its roster and new painting skills to its palette, that knew the birth and death dates of all the classical composers, that loved wordplay and Monet and food and Chopin and gardens and cryptic crosswords and colour and us, his family, most of –
Achingly, impossibly, that brain is- Isn’t. Can’t. Won’t ever. The machine keeping his. Keeping his body turning is taken away, and. His physical self breathes unaided for. For one final day. The last. The last conversation we have is not a conversation What do you. What do you say, as a phone is pressed to an ear that can’t hear? To someone who is not. Not there. Not them. But maybe. Maybe there is a sense of. A pulsing, a warming of your. Some vibration of something reaching inside their. And the actual words don’t. Don’t really matter anyway. Only the –
He. He was there. Now. I still drink my morning coffee, but. He won’t. He won’t answer his phone. I cling to the imprint in the air around me of his voice, the echo of our time following me like a persistent puppy, pulling at my trouser leg to remember. I will never not remember, I tell the echo. It’s not. It’s not possible to forget. The pieces. The pieces of me are held together by different webs of string, in. In many colours. Each one is the. Is the presence and the legacy of someone who is part of me, who has made me who I am. His string is bright red. He leaves it woven tight, even though. For him, because of him, to honour him and his love, I must not unravel. I will not, not too much. I sip my coffee and –
Week Four of Spanish Lockdown
My dreams are even more vivid than usual, populated mainly by people I have lost in real life, swirlings of journeys that never end and stories that never finish. The worlds I visit in them are lighter places than the one we find ourselves in now; they’re filled with the usual convoluted confusion but without a sense of dread. As I begin to wake, the dreamscapes trickling away gradually, I feel a pressure on my chest. Sometimes it’s my cat, purring lightly as she snoozes on me. But usually it’s just a feeling, an inner tension, a stress weighing down on me. It takes a long, hazy while before I understand it.
Spain has reached number two on the scoreboard of doom, second only to America in the number of cases. I wonder, as I always do, why it has spread so quickly here; what is it about this country, as opposed to others in mainland Europe, that has made it easy for the virus to infiltrate this particular piece of land?
I find out that the sirens, explosions and long tolling of the church bells in the evening are actually in support of the health workers in Spain, and not something more sinister. Although as someone said, to sound the sirens every day when everyone is already fearful seems a strange decision. But now I know what it is, at eight o’clock I sense the lifting of the cloud hanging over the town for those few minutes, and join in.
Saturday 4th April
Having decided to accept that creativity is clearly not flowing, and give myself a break about it, I realise that I can’t accept it, or give myself a break. The need for it is too big. It’s an intrinsic part of me, and how I’ve always been, and without that I don’t recognise myself. Just going through day-to-day things, and concentrating on earning a crust, and getting through these weeks staying as healthy as I can, is not enough. I’ve been thinking that because I can’t focus on projects for longer than ten minutes at a time, it’s pointless to even try, but now I reckon that even if the bursts of inspiration are miniscule, they have to be given airtime, and recorded, and be allowed to develop. Even if they just ferment at the back of my mind for a while, at least they won’t be lost.
Sunday 5th April
In isolation exercise news, I think I’m starting to get into a kind of rhythm, finally. Five minutes of five repetitions of five Tibetans in the late morning, fifty star jumps once or twice a day, nine more repetitions in the evening, and a few minutes of ‘before bed’ yoga. I mean, I say I’ve got into a rhythm with it. I’ve done it for two days running now, so I think that counts, doesn’t it? I could stroke should be doing a lot more than that in all honesty, given the pull of gravity on my flesh, but this’ll do for now.
Monday 6th April
It’s been building up over the last few days, with extra mad dashes, extra neediness, extra mewings and grabbing of the rugs, but today my little catette Moustique is officially, blazingly, on heat. It seems impossible that these tiger growls and fiery, spitting hisses come from such a pretty, delicate creature. The last time this happened in earnest was around Christmas and lasted well over a week, almost causing family who were staying with me to lose their minds from her incessant wailing and scratching at doors and windows, and certainly lose endless hours of sleep. At least this time it’s just me. But oh god. This is going to be fun.
My other cat Booshki is swinging between hiding for long hours under the duvet, or joining in her frenzied cries and attempting to do as she is commanding. I don’t know what he’s doing. He certainly doesn’t. He must have missed that class in cat school.
I try putting on the background music I use for my five Tibetans (whatever came up first in YouTube when I typed in ‘yoga music’,) thinking the endless rounds of long, slow, barely-changing chords and sounds of nature might soothe her. It doesn’t. It just makes me go insane, once I start tuning into what’s actually happening musically, i.e. nothing, for hours and hours. I stop it and put on some hiphop instead, very loudly. It doesn’t seem to help her, but I feel better.
Tuesday 7th April
In isolation cooking news, after all my hopes of expanding my repertoire and venturing into tiny but perfectly-formed and delicious tapas territories, I have to say that nothing experimental has happened. Unless you count putting red pesto into black tea. I swear the jars of pesto and honey look the same. Perhaps I’ll move one of them to a different spot. Oh, and a soluble tablet of multivitamins found its way into my muesli instead of into my cup. That was interesting. But probably quite healthy. And there was that time when coffee grains were spooned into the eggs I was about to scramble. Which were still scrambled, after a bit of a clean; after all, we’re rationing here, can’t waste two perfectly good eggs. And actually the hint of Arabica was almost nice; I could be onto something here.
I’m torn between being annoyed at the ‘groundhog day’ of it all, where days look so much like each other and new routines and habits are starting to be boring and making me itch, and being glad of those same routines and habits that are grounding and stabilising me, and holding the days into dealable-with shapes. Can I be both?
Wednesday 8th April
I wonder what my neighbours think I’m doing when my front door is crashed into repeatedly from the inside. Hopefully they can’t hear. My cats are hurling themselves at it at regular intervals; normally that’s the boy cat Booshki’s favourite thing to do around lunchtime most days, but now it’s Moustique and her raging hormones letting rip. Isolation madness. I’ve been feeling relatively positive and calm in the last few days, possibly because the cases in Spain seem to be dropping and that’s giving a sliver of hope that lockdown might not actually last until I’m ninety-two, but her incessant, unrequited yowls and roars waking me up all through the night, Booshki’s responses, and now this door attacking are making my underlyingly frazzled nerves positively crispy.
A lethargic day, a down day, an easily stressed and irritated, impatient day. An overcast day, then a rainy day, a heater-on day. A build-up of not enough sleep, a feeling of claustrophobia and panic when I hear on a friendvine that the lockdown will be extended well into May, and even when I can’t find any evidence of that being true on any of the news outlets, and even though I already expect that to be the case, it’s too late to unthink it, too late to unpanic. A day just to get through, to sleep off, to accept my vaguely depressed inertia and hope tomorrow will be better.
I just saw this quote and liked it:
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And, ultimately, today is a day of perspective. This is day twenty-seven. Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison.
See you next week for more lockdown excitement.
Mix x
Week Three of Spanish Lockdown
Two weeks since the announcement of the state of emergency. I take the bins out sporting a very fine orange mask, fashioned for me by my lovely neighbour. Never in my life did I think I’d be wearing a mask out on the street like this. Especially an orange one. Especially while dropping off the rubbish.
From my place to the recycling bins is about two hundred metres. During that lengthy walk, my face turned up to the sky drinking it in, I see three people waiting outside (at a two metre distance naturally) the bakery, all wearing masks. A few cars pass by, every driver also wearing one. What is this alien world?
I find it quite hard to breathe wearing the mask actually. An unnerving sensation, especially when the virus itself often causes breathing problems. I keep pulling it down to take a huge breath through my nose, when I’m nowhere near anyone, wondering about the conflicting opinions on whether or not the virus is airborne. So many opinions. So many conflicting opinions, about every part of this. I just want to get home and breathe normally.
Saturday 28th March
Going through memory boxes and time slips away, from the present, which I’m trying to stay in, into the past. That’s still better than the immediate future, though, and I revel in the nostalgia for a while.
I find a postcard from my mum, the church spires of where I live nestling in the town surrounded by mountains, the sky beckoning, the warmth seeming to seep out from the cardboard. She visited this place before I did, and loves it, as she loves all of Spain. She was supposed to be arriving for a week’s holiday today.
Sunday 29th March
My dad tells me that the latest news in the UK is that this could last six months. This sends me reeling. I read later that they don’t necessarily mean total lockdown for that amount of time, but by that time I’ve convinced myself that we’re not getting out until September. Who knows, it could be true. And the lockdown in Spain is a lot stricter than the one in the UK, so far. Six months!
It’s a lesson in pacing yourself, perhaps. The first week or two were surreal, a sense of high drama in the air, a temporary feeling of bewilderment tied in with the tentative thought that surely this state of emergency is also very temporary. Now our sentence could be extended for an unimaginable amount of time; what to do with that information? Even if it that assessment turns out to be far from the mark, and we’re ‘out’ in a month or so, still nobody knows right now, nobody can reassure us either way. So – preparing for a long stretch of isolation, where life has changed, and days have new shapes. New patterns will have to form. Be formed. By us. I’m going to have to let myself off the uber-creativity hook (which is anyway not working right now, reeling as I am in a flaccid wilderness where concentration is impossible) and not beat myself up (too hard) if I don’t finish three albums, a novel, and seven artworks in the next fortnight. I just can’t do it. All my energy is spent on teaching music on t’internet, and what I have left is reserved for throwing balls for my cats, and phone calls, and some yogic Tibetan moves on most days. I might get into a new state soon, where (my own) lockdown pressure is off, and I decide to do nothing and not even try to create – and that’s usually when things start to flow. But now I’ve written that down, it’s almost certain they won’t. Ah.
Monday 30th March
Today I watch a video of a male nurse or carer dancing flamenco down the corridor of an elderly people’s home, dressed in blue scrubs and mask, and cry.
And read a post by a friend angrily wondering why the world hasn’t stopped and minute silences haven’t been observed for the 119,000 children who have died of starvation since the virus was first discovered, and wonder angrily too.
And see a foodie article on how to make ‘ginger, sweet potato and coconut milk stew with lentils and kale’ and salivate even though I just finished breakfast.
And listen to yet another remake of a famous song with new viral lyrics, and felt that that was enough now, we get it.
And looked at the cases and death statistics for each country, seeing Spain take third place on this terrible scoreboard after being in fourth position until now.
The days are flying. The days are merging. The days are filled with all the emotions, in different orders. Sadness, anger, hunger, impatience, fear. But also happiness sometimes, usually while speaking to someone or watching my moggies fly around, immune to what’s consuming us all. Acceptance of the situation occasionally rears its tired head, inspiration flashes from time to time. It’s all there, it’ll all keep being there, until this situation shifts somewhere else.
Tuesday 31st March
My cats are hanging out on the balcony this afternoon, watching the world not go by. They suddenly bolt inside, as a loud engine noise approaches. Strange anyway, as I live in a tiny cul-de-sac with (obviously) no through traffic, and the two neighbours who drive their cars down it to park are not driving right now. I run to see what’s happening, and see a tractor, the driver fully gasmasked, and hazmat suited and booted, right under my window, spraying who knows what all over the street. Whatever it was, it stank, and I slammed the windows shut as it disappears as quickly as it arrived. Just another normal sight in these weird days.
Wednesday 1st April
A couple of long thunder rolls, darkening skies, a sudden downpour of sleety rain attacking the roof and walls and a whirling wind that gets up out of nowhere. The church bells chiming long, as sirens howl and a few bangs are heard. A neighbour’s cat that seems to have been abandoned wails on my roof.
Today my house is a welcome shelter from the outside world.
Thursday 2nd April
I am strolling through the town where I live. A bar is open, all movement and lights and energy. People I recognise are laughing, chatting, shouting to others across the room, moving to the music. Across the road another bar is packed, and next to that a cafe has no free tables. Everything whirls, clatters, gleams. I don’t understand; this isn’t allowed, this can’t be happening. The feeling in the street is of celebration, of uncomplicated relaxation, of communal happiness, but I’m just confused, and worried that everyone is going to get fined, arrested, physically forced back home, any minute now.
I wake up.
Thanks for reading, take care, and see you this time next week for more isolation wibblings.
Mix x
Week Two of Spanish Lockdown
So, two weeks have already passed. Time is doing the opposite of slowing down, strangely. Week two of staying at home starts to feel like normal life, for all my occasional raging against it. In Spain officially we have at least two more weeks to go, but my unofficial estimate is a lot more; in any case, I’m mentally prepared for a lot more.
I think.
I find myself excessively looking forward to mealtimes. They have become a bit of a highlight in these lockdown days. I’m reminded of Iris Murdoch’s ‘The Sea, the Sea’, and her descriptions of all the tiny meals the protagonist makes himself, and am inspired. I could make lots of small, interesting snacks throughout the day, using the limited collection of foodstuffs I have in my lair, and feel happy six or seven times a day, rather than just three. A big part of Spanish life is tapas, which caters for that need to graze. I miss tapas! Though the veggie option in my preferred bars is invariably chips, or bland cheese on white bread, so it might not be a bad thing to lay off for a while.
I’m also conscious of vitamins, keeping healthy, getting stronger. I’m taking vitamin C with zinc, magnesium to counteract gloom, and I was taking echinacea daily until I ran out. Having decided to limit my favourite flat eggs on toast and coffee to every other day (something to do with an article I read about coffee inhibiting your immune system) (it also had wine on the list of things to avoid, but let’s not go crazy) half my breakfasts consist of a mixture of mueslis, chia, fruit and cinnamon with rice milk, accompanied by herbal tea, lemon, ginger and honey. I should be feeling twice as healthy, twice as immune. Let’s see. For the other meals, or the countless snacks I intend to invent, I decide to branch out too. I could use the extra time I find myself with to improve my cooking skills. A good opportunity to dust off those recipe books. Then I remember I don’t own any recipe books. But who needs them – I can improvise, surely? And yes. Who knew marmite, banana and mayonnaise could taste so good? And kidney beans, tuna and melted dark chocolate on crackers so… interesting?
In isolation exercise news, I can report that running up and down my room genuinely freaks out my cats. One of them sprints away from me like a crazed loon, ears back; the other tries to stand in my way with her big eyes even wider than usual. Not helping my fitness regime, guys! They’re not much better while I’m trying to complete my (now five) repetitions of the Five Tibetans, apparently needing to clean their privates in the middle of the yoga mat at precisely that moment, or paw at my head and chew my hair while I’m being an upside down dog.
Saturday 21st March
Get woken up at six o’clock by heavy rain. Last time it rained, somewhere in the last century, the roof in my bedroom leaked, so I groggily move everything away from that side of the room, and lie back down, worrying that the ceiling will cave in. Not a great start to the day.
I read a couple of articles that spook me and resolve to absolutely really really not look at any more news things today. Can I do it? For my mental health I have to. So yes. I can. I feel, as I sense we all do, utterly emotionally exhausted, and the pingponging between anxiety and daring to feel hope is draining.
Anxiety is weird. I’ve suffered from it in bursts over the last few years, and it can be crippling. How many times have I said to myself, and to a couple of understanding, non-judgemental friends, that all I want to do is stay home with my cats? Sometimes I just didn’t want to travel, even though in theory I did. I didn’t want to take risks, just in case, even though I thought I should push myself to take those risks. On days like that, I preferred to avoid anything out there in the big bad world that could potentially go wrong, hurt the ones I love, or, right down the list, hurt me. And here we are. Careful what you wish for. I get to stay home with my cats.
I reach the end of the day having not looked at any more news. And feel a million times calmer.
Sunday 22nd March
The ever-growing numbers of cases and deaths (yes, I peeped through my fingers at the statistics this afternoon, whoops) strike me as a ghoulish version of the football scores that were read out at the end of the news when I was a kid. My brother and I used to copy the inflections – Leeds United 3 (the pitch of the voice rises on the number): Aston Villa 1 (pitch goes down) – amusing ourselves endlessly. Italy 4,825: Spain 1,326. Not so amusing. Not at all.
On a lighter note (and god knows we need those lighter notes, or else our collective souls would turn into dark and putrid matter and ooze away, never to return) (I’m not sure what I mean by that but I like the phrase) I was forcing myself through a minimising half hour, going through old CDs to see which ones still worked and which ones were worth keeping. As the music player on my computer shuffled randomly through the tracks, I was fed a song on an album I wrote quite a few years ago, that somehow resonated with how I’m feeling. A sense of nightmare you can’t wake from, a confused voyage through ‘strange corridors’ (‘there is nothing in this slippery moment to use as a foothold’), which suddenly lifts, as these moods and moments do, into a hopeful thought. I have no idea what I meant by ‘this is all for something’, nor did I when I wrote it; the lyrics just flowed. But I think I’m interpreting it right now to mean that for the earth, for nature, something had to give; the planet is doing a ‘hard reset’, as a musician/studio engineer friend said, and despite the very real nightmarish web that the virus is spinning, perhaps, as I said before, something positive could emerge. This article on the subject was interesting, click to read it here.
And here’s the song if you feel like listening:
https://mixamylo.bandcamp.com/track/all-for-something
Monday 23rd March
Just after my electricity trips twice (because I tried washing my clothes, as instructed in order to kill any remnants of virus that might be clinging onto the fibres, at 60 degrees, and there’s not enough juice in this house’s system to support that), I see a local post where someone nearby is wondering why the tap water tastes of TCP. Others say it’s the same for them. It’s almost certainly a routine cleaning of whatever bits are routinely cleaned in the waterworks, but it shoots me back to a conversation a week ago with a friend, where we went to possible worst case scenarios: no tap water anymore, or no power, or living off just plain rice, etc. She thought she might fill a large bottle with water, just in case. I laughed, thinking that was never going to be necessary. A few days after we spoke, I filled two large bottles with water. I’m pretty sure the water’s not suddenly going to dry up in our taps, or the electricity cut out, but those two bottles and a few candles (gifts that I’ve never used because I’m scared a cat will knock them over) make me feel slightly prepared. Ah – do I have a lighter?
My neighbour needs help walking her dogs again this morning, so I escape down the nearby deserted lanes and gaze at the snow-covered mountains, breathing the crisp air. Winter has arrived, finally. Back inside, hailstones hurl themselves down onto my skylights, rain falls for hours. I like the feeling today; it seems to legitimise the staying in without needing the current sinister reason for it. The heater goes on, the cats snuggle in, a little too much Netflix is imbibed. And that’s okay.
Tuesday 24th March
A good development in all of this is the more frequent calls to family and friends, and in particular the introduction of Skype calls with people I’ve never done that with before. Not that they always work; everyone on the planet is online at all times now, and we often become blurry, delayed daleks, and have to move to WhatsApp, which is a constant moving selfie, an arm-aching activity painful to keep up and a bizarre glimpse inside the mouths and nostrils of our loved ones. But it’s good to see each other, or at least parts of each other.
Despite that, I feel like I’ve reached my lockdown limit today. I’m down, despondent, with no energy. I miss hugs, I miss seeing my friends. I miss hanging out in bars and cafés with them, sharing time and space. I feel sulky, claustrophobic, trapped and scared. And lonely. It’s only day eleven; what am I going to do if it gets to day one hundred and eleven? Which is completely possible.
I slap my face metaphorically a few times, and another couple of times for good measure, and remind myself of all the worse possibilities, of which there are many, and snap out of it. Almost; I, again, watch too much of my new favourite series in between working, eat too much chocolate, drink too much wine. All signs that I’m not completely breezy. But I might be tomorrow.
Wednesday 25th March
I’m breezy! I wake up with a latin piano riff in my head, and the need to write and record some new music. A lockdown album! I’ve got a busy day with work, but in the gaps I start to prepare a track in my studio. And am foiled at the first hurdle: technical problems with my recording software stand in my way, and I can’t make it work despite a lot of swearing and grimacing. I take my laptop and hurl it out of the window onto the street below. It makes a satisfying crash as it breaks open, and all the parts flying up into the air and bouncing down again enthrall my cats who are watching from the balcony.
No, I don’t really do that, however tempting it is. I mark it down as ‘do tomorrow’ and get back to watching my series.
Thursday 26th March
Explosions sound throughout the day. We’re not actually in a war zone, I have to remind myself, though the feeling of the Blitz era is not too far removed from the situation we’re in. But this is the week of Cristo de la Expiración, a Jesus fiesta in the town, and although the procession obviously can’t take place, someone has decided that setting off the usual mini-bombs is important. My cats, vehemently, do not agree. If only, they say, someone could invent fireworks that don’t make much of a noise, so that the feeling of celebration could be seen and not heard! Oh, wait..
The aforementioned studio problems are overcome this evening, simply by applying a small crumb of logic that had been buried underneath a shovelful of agitation. I gleefully play in some piano, add some drums, strings and bass, and a song is forming. A vocal melody appears in my mind and I quickly get it down before I forget it. The lyrics need some work – I’m not sure that ‘oohhh, these lockdown blues’ is the best I can do, but it’s early days. I initially had the idea of finishing the whole song in a day, but it starts going in a direction I’m not convinced about, so I call it a night.
Talking of nights, although they’re allegedly getting shorter and this is normally the time everyone starts to come out of their winter hibernation, I’m feeling the opposite. Never have my musician hours been so upended; it gets to ten o’clock, sometimes even earlier, and I’m thinking about turning in. I’ve become ninety-two, but I’m so, so tired, and I can’t help it. I’m ecstatically happy to get into bed, and usually manage a paragraph of my book, sometimes even two, before I drop off. I think going with the flow and getting as much sleep as possible is not a bad thing at this point, so I’m not too worried. I’m sure 2am will feature once more in my life as a normal hour to be still up and recording, writing or drawing, once this is all over. Or maybe it’ll shift, my body clock will also do a hard reset and I’ll be up with the proverbial lark, raring to go at 6am. And that will be fine.
Take care,
Mix x