Monday Morning, January 7th
I am on the phone, doing an intervew with Deepak Chopra for his Sirius sat-radio show. Not sure when it will air. They are playing “Surrender 2 Love” right now, because they can’t find any of my more recent music.
Monday Morning Snow
On Saturday it was still much too warm – I walked around town in a shirt – and now it started snowing. We are supposed to get 4-8 inches today/tonight.
PS: No storm in the evening, no snow and the little bit from the morning quickly melted. Went to a friend’s house where we watched Dustin Brunson’s Kham/Tibet slideshow of about 450 photos. The slideshow was utterly amazing and beautiful. Suggested he should get a Flickr account to let more people see his photographs. Will keep you posted.
Monday Morning 10. July
I am walking East on Market at 7AM. Beautiful clouds in the sky. Across Hyde Park I walk towards the cathedral. 
South of the cathedral is a staircase that leads to a footpath which takes me to William Street. East on William Street toward Kings Cross. Right on Victoria. The Latteria is packed, not a single seat available. I go to Morgan’s. Coffee. I look at a magazine, the June/July issue of Wallpaper. I notice an advertisement for a company that sells Lighting fixtures and now offers a way to control those lights from a computer. Lighting scenes for shops, restaurants, bars, hotel, and soon certainly: home. Home as a stage. Living as acting. I feel about this the same way I feel about remote controls… don’t need it, rather get up… brain/body not separate… Funny to imagine people setting up special lighting scenes in their living room that duplicate the lighting from a movie scene…
Then I have to head back to my hotel for nine phone interviews.
Monday Morning
San Antonio… TV… Channel 5… KENS… one song… “Bells”… around 9:45AM
Done! Had to shorten Bells for TV and that turned out well. Also played a little bit of Duende del Amor at the very end of the TV show.
Monday Morning
In Portland we couldn’t find the Lavazza espresso beans we usually use and splurged on a few cans of Illy beans… Damn, that stuff is expensive, but you can taste the difference. There is nothing like the coffee in that silver can with the red top. Woke up in a hotel room in Spokane this morning and ran through the rain to the bus to make myself an espresso with the machine we carry. Ah!
After the Portland show I tried to figure what contributes to a great performance. I came up with these four elements (in no particular order):
– Venue and Acoustics
– Audience and Energy in the room
– Band and Energy between the musicians
– Food (and wine)
I think at least two of these four elements need to be there for a happening show.
In Portland there is Nike and I bought a pair of Nike Considered boots, which I think are very cool. The boot is very comfortable and looks great.
Our designers quietly agreed to high standards for Considered. And then they started talking.
As our chemists were finding ways to significantly reduce the toxic chemicals from rubber production, our designers upped the ante by setting another challenge: Why not see if we can fold some recycled rubber into the mix?
With our Reuse-A-Shoe program, we had already found ways to separate shoe components prior to recycling. We pushed on another front: Why not design for disassembly from the very outset?
When we were looking to reduce the use of adhesives, our designers considered a more radical approach: Can we avoid adhesives in the first place?
I also could not resist this shoe, which I found in black. Now I walk around the bus like it is a spaceship…
Regarding this earlier post: I did not walk to Mariana Chicet’s Straight from the Old Country, on 3rd Street in LA. last week. I decided to stick with Shiseido, remembering that once I ran out of another local product I was using in New Zealand and had to spend a day trying to find something to replace it with… in other words, I need a product that I can replace no matter what continent I am on and Shiseido a) works for my face and b) is available anywhere…
Hm, that reminds me of using web-based apps rather than local apps on my laptop. Eric Case turned me onto Backpack, which I think will become very useful for me. I started a new t-one 2005 project with Jon on Backpack. We will be able to share ideas, sounds, images and music files while we work on that project. I think it will also be very useful for designing a cover. Instead of sending updates back and forth and keeping track of the which version of the credits is the latest one, the latest version will simply be the one that is on (in?) my Backpack.
