Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

That was a good week-end. Apart from lessons and a walk around Hampstead Heath, Saturday saw the return of 'Dead & Buried' the club night at the new-old venue in Archway (what used to be 'Tiki Bar' and was covered in bamboo and bits of palm tree, an effort to make it a 'latin' bar, now very refurbished as a modern dance venue), which was excellent, Sunday a small but perfectly formed 64th birthday celebration of a friend in remote Enfield. Slightly weird that it takes longer to get to Enfield from here (Kentish Town) than it did to get to Stevenage the other day.

Fugue, from the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV998 by J S Bach.

A few slips and technical recording issues - but of course this was a live recording in concert.

How strange to be home on a Saturday night. Up until March 2020 you'd never catch me home -well, 9:06 pm is a bit early, I would probably have been getting ready to go out. These days ... some of my friends have gone back to that but in my circumstance I'm a bit too vulnerable to risk that. Every time some friends post about going clubbing or to a gig, a couple of days later I see some of them posting that they've turned positive on the tests and caught the virus. I miss that -seeing friends, dancing, the music. But daren't just yet. So I stay in this tiny flat thinking of gigs and clubs and dancing. It is not a sad thought -I started doing those things at a point in my life when most people are giving up on them because they've 'grown up'- but I do miss it.

Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City by Elizabeth Dearnley




A collection of short stories based around the theme of the London pea-super fog. I found it rather uneven and perhaps oddly I found the couple of essays (one by Virginia Woolf, one by Claude McKay, fair more interesting than the stories, which I would have loved when I was 14 but at this point I found rather predictable and so-so; not terrible but not that very exciting. Still, enough of the book is a good read that it is work the while. And of course you might have different tastes and not agree with me.



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Chaconne BVV1004 - J S Bach (excerpt 2)- Flavio
1 min edit for IG
Flavio Matani, guitar
A quick take at home some time ago... with some bloopers

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Flavio (that's me) playing a quick take at home of La Negra by Antonio Lauro, rather a long time ago (around 2008, I think). 1 minute version for IG.
Currently doing online guitar lessons!
for info on guitar lessons/performance:
flavio_matani@mac.com
camdenguitar.wordpress.com

That was a good week-end, but increasingly I notice that I cannot do all-nighters and go to several clubs on the same night as I ... oh, ok, it always took me several days to recover from that sort of thing, but it doesn't get better as you get older. Still, it was all good.

On Friday I went to an exhibition of art of a Venezuelan friend -'Clay. Wallpaper. Venezuelan Scenarios' by Andrea Moreno at Craving Coffee in Tottenham Hale. The pieces had a lot of subtext related to the current Venezuelan political situation and to V'zlan popular culture. I enjoyed that. It was strange to be in a place where about 30% of the people present spoke in Spanish with Venezuelan accents -and addressed me in sort of cautious English. Surely I look and sound Venezuelan? My ex-girlfriend used to say I wrote with a Venezuelan accent....



Mondlicht was a blast, it is more or less the new incarnation of Invocation in a smaller, more central venue (the basement of the Albany in Gt Portland St). As I traditionally had a little birthday celebration at Reptile, I left at midnight and headed for Archway. Now, I like Reptile even though the choice of music is not always my cup; had a good bit of a dance, chatted with friends, but by 3:00 am I'd decided I'd had enough so headed home. Could have walked but didn't; the 134 takes me right to my doorstep from there. Had some good conversations but also discovered that somebody I quite like (beautiful, interesting woman in many respects and from every other interaction I'd had with her, intelligent and mature) turns out to be a climate change denier. As I backed off slowly, the other friend who was present was asking her about some other conspiracy theory trope 'sure you also believe then that...' and she replies 'actually, since you mention...' at which point I disappeared back into the dance floor. 

On Sunday I met with friends at the Abbey Tavern in Kentish Town for Sunday Roast -which was very good, as was the gathering. At the bar I ran into a former guitar pupil who was on his first shift as a bartender at the place. That was a little bit strange. 

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A slice of Moon over Kentish Town

This was a quiet week-end. Had thought of going to the SOS festival but things happened otherwise, for no particularly important reasons. Saturday did see the Hampstead Alternative Picnic, organised as always by londonjon and... that was pretty much it. Went to the Slime after the picnic to try and catch up with a couple of the bands, but two of the ones I was interested in seeing had already played and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing Assemblage -so turned back.

My pictures of the picnic on Saturday (Facebook album)

On Sunday, on the way there again I thought better of it and instead had a wander down (or is it up) the South Bank from Embankment up to London Bridge, taking pictures of the sunset over the Thames. A quieter and fresher time than at the festival although not that much less crowded.