Lindo : Moss on the Mountain

Last year sometime I had the opportunity to walk up to around 2500 meters on a mountain north of Banff in Canada and swim in a glacial lake. At the very top of the mountain I met an Australian who told me about moss. Forty years to become, forty years to recover. It was this conversation that made me promise myself not to discard the next bad idea I had, but rather to let it breathe and change and become something over time. Here’s the one-year mark. The tuning is E Flat A D g b flat f I first used this tuning for an improvised recording made for South African Magnum Photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa. That track is on my album “Billy Goes to Durban.” A while later I returned to it and tried to learn it, failed, then wrote the opening of this piece, which I called “Lindo.” Later in Basel, Switzerland I wrote a piece called “Basel” to recover from an inspiring few days exploring classical Indian rhythmic possibilities with my friend tabla player Udai Mazumdar. And finally, on descending the mountain in Canada, I started working with my “less good idea” (aka William Kentridge) to write “The Moss on the Mountain” which closes this piece.