When presented with a choice, pigeons tend to walk rather than flying
2005-09-09. 21:00 (Vienna Time)
In around 19 hours I’ll be back on a plane again.
This time last year if I was faced with a plane trip I would have been excited. Now I just hope it’s not too painful. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve more than doubled my lifetime flight quota in the last year, and that most of them were in Ryan Air or similarly livestock oriented carriers I think is just the icing on the cake.
Upcoming badness notwithstanding, the last 2 weeks have been pretty cool. I’ve had to keep reminding myself (and others have helped with the reminding) that I just happen to have been flown to the other side of the world to play two VJ gigs. That is a Rather Cool Thing.
Rowley came up from Italy on Monday morning to be Assistant to the VJ (and Assistant Cocktail Drinker) at the gig on Monday night and then Assistant to the Wandering Around Vienna for the following couple of days.
Getting back a bit: I worked mein bunghole off last week. The Brisbane-Singapore-Dubai-Vienna trip did some fortuitous sleep pattern stuffing up which left me a chronically early riser. For the first 6 days I was here I did little but sleep, work, eat and travel between venues for the above. During that time I found out some more information about the mysterious VJ gig: It was in Linz. It was for a Bookstore. It was for the opening of the bookstore’s newest, biggest, sexiest store. It was on Sunday and Monday, and by Sunday I was mostly ready.
I spent about half the week putting together a rather nice, relaxed, downbeat mixed set of music in Ableton Live. Last VJ set I did in Austria I mixed music in Acid, and I’m much happier with what Live enabled me to put together. It was faster (when I figured out what was going on), more intuitive (to do the figuring out) and the final product could of course be edited and changed live. In performance I of course focussed on the VJing aspect much more than the music. But a couple of moments of filter tweaking with linked midi controllers and laptops was enough to convince me that I’ll be working in Live much more in the future.
The Sunday show was really relaxed and fun. There were two openings. The first for the Thalia employees (several hundred of whom were bussed in from various Austrian locations including Vienna) and the second for various Bigwigs. Sunday was one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve played. I was looked after very well, despite the video crew not having long enough cables and having to move from my original (extremely cool) setup position at one of the store cash desks, and the gaggle of Thalia store employees seemed to be having a blast. However, from my revised position on the side of the store I was out of the way enough that only the seriously interested came over to see what I was up to. Despite this I had several compliments, both on the music and the visuals. A nice Austrian girl asked me which CD I was playing. She was so disappointed when I told her that I mixed it myself that I gave her my card and said I’d send her a CD if she emailed me.
Unfortunately Tom had to leave early so I was faced with a late train back to Vienna. Soon after I found this out I was faced with someone babbling German over my shoulder. After I explained to him that I had no idea what he was talking about but would do my best to help him if he could rephrase in English I was reintroduced to Wolfgang. He’s a VJ. He uses Resolume. He and I spent the rest of the set talking about respective VJ scenes and drinking beer. Then he topped it off by wrangling me a bus ride back to Vienna so I didn’t have to catch the train. Tonight I should be partying with him but unfortunately Al-Gebra has precedence so instead I am in here, having consumed an incredible meal of lamb and hummous with tomato, parsley, paprika and olive oil and a side of warm flatbread.
I just exhausted my last shisha of the trip, which is a sad moment. So soon I have to face the underground trip back to Lassallestrasse, final packing of baggage, sleep, Tom meeting-up-with and then airport.
Damn you airport.
Rowley and I had a blast this week. The Monday gig should have been a much scarier affair but the appearance of a band meant that I had even less to do. Tom had to leave early again, so this time Rowley and I did indeed end up on the 3:38am train from Linz to Wien. Fortunately someone had come prepared with a rather large collection of Neo Geo and other Mame rom goodness, so we whiled away the night playing Pang!, Neo Bomberman and other olskool things. We finally arrived in Wien at around 6am, so the underground was running again and we were able to cheaply make our way back to the apartment, have some 7am weissbiers and fall asleep.
Sleeping patterns out the window.
I can’t really remember with much detail what the rest of the week entailed. There was plenty of Bomberman, plenty of morning weissbier and some rather large portions of schnitzel. We even made it to the Schloss Schonbrunn gardens for the requisite hour of touristing, once again confirming that when it comes to big old buildings and gardens then I’m not bursting with fruit flavours. We should have replaced most of it with lunches, dinners and shishas at Al-Gebra (for those who aren’t interested in link-clicking, it’s my favourite Viennese restaurant, which just happens to be Egyptian), because when we finally made it here for a quick meal before putting R back on the train we had superb food and other things, and Rowley was considering purposefully missing the train so we could have an extra hour of tea and shisha.
We made the train with 5 minutes to spare.
Now I’m contemplating the underground trip back to the apartment. I hate leaving here because Adel looks after me so well and I feel like a total traitor going back to my own country as I do.
However, I’m really really really really missing the Rachgirl, so I can say that there won’t be a single trace of sorrow when I leave tomorrow. Once again Tom has invited me back for some work in just over a month. I think that might be a bit too soon, I’ve got lots of snuggles to catch up on. But there seems to be enough work coming up that I’ll be back before too much time has passed.