harmonica, flute and percussion session

Another early start. The phone rang next to my head and waking me from a sweaty dream about scrabbling to find imaginary Hotel expenses for the Company in London. A textbook anxiety dream which comes from having to account so specifically for every penny we spend. I remember clicking on file after file on my laptop but having forgotten to organize which Hotels were where in each country.

A friend of Shanti’s Mum had lent us a top floor penthouse apartment for today’s harmonica, flute and percussion session so I rolled out of bed and into yesterday’s clothes for the ride to the block where we were greeted by a maid in uniform and an over-excited dog. The place was full of the lady’s paintings, all over the walls and leaning up against each other in corners and against tables. When she arrived herself to greet us I pointed out a picture that I thought was really wonderful, and true to the charming Jamie we all know and love, I’d pointed out the one piece in the whole place which hadn’t been painted by her, but a close friend. Oops.

There were sculptures in her roof garden and we set the first shot up to frame the harmonic player through the metal arms of an elongated flautist. As we nailed the melody and framed both cameras to perfection, once again, the system kept crashing. Poor Duncan looked so perplexed. It’s enough to deal with just running these recordings and mixing and sorting as we go, but to constantly switch systems for these random, unexplainable problems, is it the RAM of the computer? the mixer? the ghost in the machine? It’s exhausting to add this continuous bug to the mix of stuff we need to get through. Finally we switched to the Roland box and were safely laying down the parts again. The track is sounding fantastic. It feels so great when you constantly get that rush of ‘this is so good’ every time it plays back, and now having joined the flute and harmonica riffs together it’s beginning to sound like a classic film score you’ve never heard before.

Shanti cooked a great lunch at the apartment with the lady who was hosting us and we all sat round a large table like a family with cameras flashing us in two’s and threes to remember the occasion. Anna arrived with her 10 yr old boy Nicki who I was to interview later, and Shanti’s Dad arrived to play some percussion too. He was on Peter Gabriel’s ‘Passion’ album and slotted right into the groove without hesitation. Shanti was very proud to say the least.

I had to leave earlier than I wanted to to do yet more interviews at Anna’s father’s house. First was little Nicki who appropriately had an inflatable planet earth on his knee. He must have been a bit intimidated by the cameras, and me too probably (fair enough) because he was reluctant to answer very many questions, even when his Mum took over the asking. The strange thing was that he gave the impression that he did actually have insights and views on the subjects, he just wasn’t ready to share them with us.

The next two interviews were kind of fun with Anna’s Dad and an old friend of his. They expressed themselves passionately but as the friend only spoke Portuguese, I’ll once again have to wait for the translations to know exactly what she said. I’m in two minds about this new development. In the last film nearly all, if not all our interviews were conducted in English and a flow happened between me and the subject that yielded something unique. Now of course I don’t want to limit our film to only English speakers, that would be silly, and there’s definitely something musical about the sonic quality of different tongues, but I still prefer the process of an intimate chat with someone that I can get to know, read and dance with as we talk, rather than just running through a list of topics like an indiscriminate scoop.