Wednesday evening in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. Amongst the sounds of crickets, roommates upstairs footsteps and passing airplanes I sit in my tiny home recording studio "Nook studios". The Boyfriends asleep and the computer with all the music programs is crashed untill my friend Ori comes and performs his MAC shamanism - which makes for one dull evening at home...so tonight I Blog. Blog blog. I drove the 40 minutes to Burbank this evening to record music (for free) at a really nice recording studio, this deal is through a friend from my work who is taking engineering classes and gets "Practice time" to record personal or friends projects. The evening consisted of 2 hours of me and my wacky, new agey, British pal Ellen (who really want's to be a record producer) trying to get a signal to flow through a "Trident" mixer, a neve pre-amp and into a Pro Tools session...we wasted a lot of time figuring this process out and then proceeded to record me on a grand piano - which was grand...After our alloted 3 hours was up, we went to a nearby Thai Restaurant: Sandwiched clostrophobicaly in between a 7-11 and a Little Ceaser's at a corner strip mall in Van Nuys is Mikala's Thai with a neon sign flasing "open till midnight". Ellen and I, our belly's rumbling with hunger, commence to sit down and order drinks from a cherubic looking overweight thai teenager. Despite the claims of "the best thai in town" there is only 1 couple sitting at a table in the far end of the restaurant and they're both staring at the television above the bar. I glance up to see what they're watching and it's called "Extreme Make-over", one of these awful reality TV shows that are so depressingly popular right now, there is a girl in her 20's being interviewed with bandages over her nose and neck. The hosts look like they've all had plastic surgery as well. Ellen looks over at me and says something to the effect of "I can't stand tv anymore - it depresses me" and I agreed as we both tried to avert our eyes from the two televisions cleverly and strategically placed around the restaurant so people could dine there and NOT have to talk to each other. Our conversation progressed from television culture consumerism to her love life to recording techniques to healing my "chackras" (before ellen wanted to be a Record Producer she was a reiki practicioner) . I don't know this lady really well, but she is really funny and I am getting a kick out of her take on life and how randomly our conversation is turning from topics like "Crushes on sound engineers" to "guided meditiations" with a Tibetion Buddist Monk! So funny the people we are randomly and temporarily swirled together with throughout our lives, it makes me think of a quote on a piece of art a friend once gave me "Many a life passes you by only to see your own more clearly" . Celeste Lear