the loft nyc...

so i'm back at my desk listening to holy ghost drifting off to sunday night when i managed to finally get to the musical event of the year...david mancuso's 40th anniversary of the loft. There's too much to say about the evening...i got there at 6 which felt late...the pure love of music and dance was actually quite exhausting as you were really at the mercy of the party...like the excitement you got as a kid at christmas, but to be in a room of people who were all there for a single purpose, to know you were sharing something never to be repeated that formed part of music as we know it today was priceless...and thanks to my dancing partners hen,vicki and lara and clare we made the night an exhausting celebration...here's some highlights but i can only urge to to get there if you are ever lucky enough to get invited...thankyou simon and david...

getting the coals lit...

I Will Come Back (Classixx Acapulco Nights Version)

turning it up...



fanning the fire...



keeping the flames lapping...



the end of night...

fonder...

its been a few weeks and all i've seen is this of my lovely other half...thankyou skype...48 hours away from not needing your fuzzyness...


"It was because the place was just the same
that made your absence seem a savage force"

thanks...elizabeth jennings

a surprise smash...

i should be happy...

i was thinking about all the things i haven't done this year...and then stumbled accross something i actualy got round to producing. It made me realise that when i apply myself i can actually create something i actually like and that it actually had an effect...the knock-on effect of going out with a writer is the fear that rises up when I have to write...but this was for 2 friends who were getting married so i bit the bullet...

love builds up

the brightest light I ever saw,
burned with me, glowed with me,
stayed with me when i needed it most.

it slept with me, cared for me,
gave me my partner in crime.

lives bound together into a perfect book of adventure,
where the things of dreams became real,
and nothing was mine any more, it was ours.

i jigged like prince, sang with maria,
origami at will, such a thrill,
cauliflower cheese, thank you please,
and hearts had found their place in life.

a gorgeous ache; an ordinary swoon,
I know for sure love is in this room.

sunshine an a rainy day,
and all the things i cannot say,

can now unfold.

Give with me, take with me,
you got the love i need to see me through,
Love me the way that I love you.

right now,
that word we use when what we feel exceeds all other words.

love builds up,
and the shimmer of light became the bright sun,
accomplice to our joy.

horse meat glasto...

and the other one...



turn left at the lightning
in the back door
people
heat
mud (my first wellies)
wine in a plastic bottle
old friends
back stage
sofa's
real toilets
hot tent
sausages
cider
wine
cidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercider
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cidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercider
sunshine
blue ridge mountains
cidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercidercider
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down by the river
oh my god this is really happening
drinking vodka on each other
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horse meat
poppers!!!
gravy and chips
birds nest
charades
tea
c.s.n....for what it's worth
sleep
on it
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"is your head in the same dimension as your body"
get rid of it

i think you get the picture,or maybe not specifically...anyway i'm sure it's not very interesting hearing about my festival experience as it's mostly the same as everyone else's...i think my girlfriend realised that her opinion of me being slightly high maintenance may have disappeared...god bless being wrong...i have a dream...

the opposite...

for many years ive marvelled at the 7 series of genius created by larry david...it got to a point i watched it so much i started to think i was a character in it...but that another tale along with the time i started thinking my life was all in folders in a photoshop file being turned on and off...i digress...and wonder what my first grassy rave will be like...something i've allways avoided like the plague, it just seemed like too much of the norm...but of recent i've thought alot about the things i'll never get a chance to do...and how small things lever themselves into your life and end up being sturdy points of reference...i get to go with my beautiful girlfriend, some other incredible rabble, i get to drink some hallucinogenic 'stealth' cider our friends make and i get to listen to him most importantly...

the jury's out till tuesday...here's to saying yes to things you're not sure of...

talc and sunday exercise...

Back in the late sixties in a Loft room on 647 Broadway, a young Timothy Leary disciple and a group of like-minded flower children unwittingly created the blueprint for New York’s disco underground. Beneath a ceiling covered in balloons and streamers, David Mancuso stood before a small Buddha, weaving an eclectic and atmospheric soundtrack (from obscure Latin and African rock, to psychedelic soul and unclassifiable ethereal LP tracks) to match the mood and movement of the dancers; who defined the melting pot that was cooking up in post-industrial New York. Re-launching his party as ‘Love Saves The Day’ in 1969 (after a period of Buddhist disownment and a trip to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital) Mancuso and his friends created an environment where freedom and unity were the watchwords, as dancing became communion. In the early seventies as word about this unique dance space started to filter through, The Loft became a haven for NYC’s outsider art community. The party’s whole aesthetic, from the refined sound system to the family ethic, became a huge influence on New York’s future DJs and their revered clubs, with famous ‘Loft babies’ including Nicky Siano (The Gallery), Larry Levan (Paradise Garage) and Frankie Knuckles (Chicago’s Warehouse).

Mancuso once claimed he was “tuning in to ‘that natural rhythm - that three billion year old dance – I just applied it through these artificial means which were amplifiers and records.” The bearded mystic first brought this party ethic to London at the end of the nineties as a guest of Nuphonic Records. However, it was a conversation with Tim Lawrence while he was researching his book ‘Love Saves The Day’ that led to Mancuso’s Loft parties becoming regular happenings at The Light Bar in Shoreditch, with Lawrence and friends setting up The Lucky Cloud Sound System. These parties have inspired others such as LCSS and Voices collective member (alongside DJ Alex another LCSS partner) Cedric Woo, DJ Cosmo and Simon and Guillaume whose Beauty and The Beat, Cosmodelica and Deep Frequency parties respectively embrace the Loft atmospherics, as London embraces the more cerebral and spiritual side of nightlife.

you'll be there if you should be there.

---

dust...

15 years ago a walked into newcastle town centre crying and had a cup of tea with my friend jill...it was truly a surreal part of my life, i remember the spinning feeling that the world had been assaulting me with for the previous 10 years just dissipated, everything seemed hushed even though it kept on turning...when i got back to my house everyone didn't know what to do, i suggested we all go let off some steam, we'd spent so much time with each other waiting, waiting, waiting and when it happened we really had no place for ourselves...so we went out...out on our own hazy path, i ended up playing music here alongside him...at the end of the night sasha asked me if i was the guy that has cleared his floor...it's odd what you remember...i remember playing this...i woke up amid all my amazing friends sprawled out all over my house, usually that would be the point that my mum would have rounded everyone up and made tea for the wounded but not that morning.

15 years goes by so fast...some things feel like they just happened.

alison kate sankarayya, 15th october 1942 - 28th may 1994.x

i know that my mum would love the person i love.