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Imagine Bauhaus meets the Shining meets Eyes Wide Shut in deepest South West Texas.
Well I am there. A huge and spacious, black stone floored apartment, (park sized by London
standards), stunning design, discrete art, luxurious kitchen and bathroom appliances and a
white bed the size of a tennis court. All alone. Good lord. What luck.
Pretty bloomin’ scary though at 3am having to run the length of the corridor to switch off the
light post my beautiful hosts perfect organic welcome dinner and departure.

I was not ready for this.
Clear dry heat, mountains,
cracklingly quiet space and skies of blue that unfurl endless over goddam straight horizons Ma’am.
I have landed in El Paso and am driving the three hours to Marfa alone.
And then the light goes.

PING!
Open the portal from a world of fast moving straight lined digital connections to a
shifting organic landscape, a bubble of Mahleresque passion slowly brewing in the
distance, that comes closer, that gradually + subliminally spins up a storm which
suddenly busts into space and spins us round and round – whoops of delight in the
distance from… was that people yelling hilarious?!…… the sea crashing and bashing,
surging us forwards + backwards and up and down the room and lashing us thick with
candlyfloss phwsoosh! …….driving us to this place where a beat thumped in and we
pounded on and on and were spun, whipped fast in a thumping tumble dryer, transported
to a rattling weeeahhhhhhh softy cloud of strings that held us suspended in the softest angel
held harness u could imagine.. before, ah, silence.
[Kaffes’ multi-channelled experiment in Brooklyn at the wonderful ISSUE PROJECT ROOM, audience present.]

After 11 months patient struggle, we finally have a new and permanent studio space.
17B Ellingfort Rd, Hackney, London E8.
At last music for bodies work can really continue.

Ok yes, I love your ears and souls oh audience and won’t put you through my feeble struggles.
Back to the practise room / VIetnam – oh teacher, where could you be ?
I will pink ball a performance of solo trumpet lines from “Men Being Butterflies” instead.

Admit it. Only one in every seven notes or so is really worth listening to.
Yes, back to that familiar struggle of the acoustic musican – the live player – the performer.
So much pleasure in the doing and sometimes so little in the listening back.
And with this sound system its brutal.
I am attempting to make music out of microtoanl bending and shaping of single plucked notes.
Each one should be diamond.

I am at GRM, Maison Radio, Paris, France on a week’s residency. They really look after me.
I work slowly and carefully with my dan-bau in the middle of a circle of eight big speakers.
The room is huge and comfortable, sounds fabulous and is full of acousmatic history.
I work with David’s pink ball interface, plucking then drawing a note around the room as I
shape its pitch en meme temps. It’s slow work, requires the accuracy of Bed composing,
but the labour rewards.

After two years making multichannelled music to feel, I am back on a table working small but direct with physical instruments to make music. The Bed work is a stunning teaching in the experience of the human enjoyment of music. Working direct with the human body as map, as score, only adds to that learning. The amount we have covered reveals we have only just begun this work, but back on a table, with oh so fresh ears and a vibrating string box back under my hands, the life in this music is fabulous and I wonder how I have left it so long.

I am humbled and tenderized: bashed back to animal by elements slapping
on the Isle of Skye for a week.
2008 feels calm and Hampstead Heath’s New Year’s Day huddles of arm in arm
perambulators strangely 18th century as we paddle through the organised mud
in herds, reassuringly chatting of the better things to come.
Spot a herd of Red Deer running the far side of a black heather covered valley
and you might think they were Velociraptors.

Back in Mexico City where the gallery has become a place there across the square
where scruffy dogs meander, old men play chess and later bash out funky songs in
trios as the sun comes down. Inside there is the Body of the Bench, made in concrete
from the plans that did come through fine after all.
Right now it all seems pretty miraculous.