Sunday 1 January 2012

Happy New Year!

Hi all. I hope you had a great Christmas! These photographs were taken down in Whitley Bay, shortly before dusk on New Year's Day and in the distance it is just about possible to see St. Mary's Lighthouse.


The buildings in the background in the picture below are at the bottom of Whitley Bay town. Right around the corner of the headland is Cullercoats, which leads on to Tynemouth, another spectacular stretch of coastline.
I love to come down to the beach whenever I can (usually during evenings and sometimes at weekends) to reflect and also to take in the elemental surroundings. It is about 15 minutes walk from home and once I'm down on the sand in order to get a bit of exercise I try to walk as far as I can towards St. Mary's Lighthouse, time permitting, of course.
Moving on to a progress report with the book - I'm now whizzing quickly through a fourth draft and as a result of several days of work I have already managed to get as far as E2-E4 (almost 80 pages into a 140 page document). After several years of writing my efforts are finally starting to resemble a book, which is really satisfying.
This morning I received an e-mail from Elliott Sharp in New York. Elliott is an acclaimed experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist and played at both Manuel Gottsching's 55th birthday celebrations in Berlin and the More Inventions for Electric Guitar concert in Japan in September of 2010. He took the time to comment on his admiration of Manuel's music and his experiences of performing on both occasions. Big thanks, Elliott for contributing to my book!
Several other important figures in the Manuel Gottsching story have also agreed to contribute towards the book, something that I'm very excited about - more news as and when I get it. In the meantime I wish everyone who follows this blog from time to time a fantastic 2012! As ever I'll be back soon.....

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