October 22nd 2021
Terra is this earthy life, meta the metaphysical, beyond this earthly life, muso is a musician’s word for musician.
TERRA
This last couple of weeks has been mostly rather too much terra, but with some hugely relieving meta from time to time. In a nutshell I’m about to start converting the office at The Loft into a second lodgers bedroom. This should be ready to rent out early next year. It will be a ‘room with a view’, for sure. I’ve got to project manage the building of a stud wall, the dismantling and selling of the built-in office and then the redistribution of all my office files and scores in a new storage solution in the main room. Then furnish the space ready for a new lodger to live in.
I’ve spent a long time thinking how to do this and I’m getting to the point where activity is almost ready to happen. Some of you know my original plan from 2018 was to sell my flat and move into a one bed in the new Hornsey Town Hall development. I exchanged contracts in 2018 but have since realised the flat I have committed to was mis-sold to me on the basis I could build a room structure on the terrace and have a private office in the new Hornsey Town Hall. Neither of these things are going to be possible and I have let them know my feelings on the matter. Sadly, nothing in writing to prove it was mis-sold me.
So I have now put the one bed at HTH on the market (just a floor plan) and hope to sell it by the December 2021 deadline. If it doesn’t sell, I will have to borrow money and let it out for a year or two, then sell it. I will carry on living here, with two lodgers. It is just manageable for me to do that for a year, maybe two.
I have also taken the step of putting the Loft on the market in case I can get an offer I can’t refuse in the meantime. So anything could happen at this point. My sensible plan is to assume the one bed flat will not sell from a floor plan only by December and borrowing money will be the way to do it.
If it does sell then that will be a relief and I’ll probably stay here for a year or two anyway, and try it out with two lodgers.
The amount of thinking that I’ve done to enable that brief summary above to be written doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s taken up a huge amount of time, but I think I now have the head space to deal with it, however it turns out.
META
The meta moments in the last two weeks have been glorious: I’m very lucky to be apprenticing with the spiritual signpost known as Henckel. He is a wonderful balm on Mondays and Thursdays on Zoom where my whole being seems to find a resting place of such profound peace and simplicity I am left deeply grateful and moved by the sessions.
I also find an equally deep resting place with my Cranial Sacral therapist. My whole nervous system seems to find the neutral gear and then hovers ever so softly into homeostasis, the place where all true healing can happen. I come away from the sessions shaking my head in total wonder and joyful bewilderment at the power of this technique.
The other meta space is, strangely, my one on one workouts at the gym! OK I’m grunting and puffing as I lift up the 16KG deadlifts but after 45 minutes of sweating and pumping iron I’m so totally out of it, all my old body memories, fixed tensions and trauma holdings are shaken up and begin to rearrange themselves in less rigid patterns. Waves of unfelt feeling surge to the surface too. I have a hot shower and freshen up and feel like I’ve almost rebuilt something of myself internally – if not externally, – where signs are slower to show themselves! But on we go with that programme!
MUSO
Musically it has been an intense focus on Land Mass for the last two weeks as we prepared the final preview in time for the zoom weekend, last weekend, and the upcoming premiere on OnJam on October 29th. I’ve been jamming with Adrian Lee via Sonobus and he invited me to work with him on a project called Museum of Austerity which was part of the London Film Festival. My contribution was added too late for the London version sadly, but we’re looking forward to including it as part of the Amsterdam airing later this year. More on that in my next blog and newsletter probably.
Have been loving this Indian summer and the mild, almost balmy autumn days…
Warmly, Jenni
