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Six Weeks

Man, what’s up? Jesus this is weird aye? I had to open up my calendar to see how long we’ve been sheltering or whatever. Man, I was supposed to be in Japan this week. Six weeks since I flew home - since then S and I (and Samba!) have been sequestered here, which is pretty fine for me. Except, well, no income! It will get tricky soon enough. It’s complicated for sure, the finances were already pretty well strained.

One solace is that there’s a lot of us in the same boat - although that’s actually the scariest part in a way. But I’ve been quite inspired, heartened maybe, at all the music and creativity on social media. G. Love has keeping up his daily performances as well as weekly benefit shows. Commendable! I’ve been doing my best to share, I go Facebook Live (Follow Jimi Jazz page) for piano meditations in the 10am PDT hour weekdays except Tuesday. I just let my mind wander sitting at the piano, sometimes it’s a bit practicey, but I hope some folks enjoy it. My Mom puts it on when she’s doing the dishes, which is perfect.

But I got a few requests for some bass, so I’m putting together a Cocktail Hour with a few jams on the upright. Although, like most bassists I’m mainly an accompanist, I have a few pieces that are suitable for solo presentation. Unfortunately, I decided to try to edit a few clips together and well, data transfer took a lot longer than I anticipated. I also have like a student version of Final Cut which I like, but alas the 20 min video took five hours to render and print. Eeek! I think I have to adjust some setting, I had this program down, but that was like ten years ago, and on a proper editing machine at the film school. Did you ever check my films out? (https://vimeo.com/user1739538) - Hit me up for sound track work, that was the whole point of doing those films!

Anyhow, it looks like I’m going deep in the editing zone here, though I might just post what I’ve done so far, even though well, the aspect ratio is weird. If I can get my workflow together though - I might shoot landscape, then get into frames - I think my program can do that, then I am liberated from the iPhone sizing. Man, I wish I had access to a decent editing rig though, I forgot how much I dug that part of film making. “Work with what we got,” is the order of the day, so I got pretty decent audio gear, though it’s Amish 2012. (Here’s a blog post from a few years ago - http://www.jimijazzmusic.com/blog/detail/amish_2012 regarding this philosophy, dig it.)

Then I’m gonna take a hot bath. I have some Japanese bath salts my friends got me on their trip a while back. Man, I hope we get a chance to make up those gigs if and when this shit is all over - Prayers and Visions!  Amen.

Six weeks, whew.

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Portland, Sun peeking out, still wet.

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