On Friday the 13th of March 2020, I was struck by a car while crossing the street in Los Angeles. I woke up in the hospital the next day with the world on lockdown. A few surreal weeks later, wearing an eyepatch to cancel out double vision and still suffering from intense bouts of vertigo, I hurriedly packed up a long life in Los Angeles and fled from the city for the Virginia countryside on an eerily empty airplane. In the wake of a near-death experience and with our whole planet in the midst of a time-suspending crisis, I turned to music to cope, to soothe, to heal and to reunite the hemispheres of my brain.
Far from the community and routines I had taken for granted, and with most of my instruments and equipment left behind in storage, I encountered myself through music in a new way, recording many hours of free floating improvisations with my beloved Tascam 4-track throughout the quarantine months of April, May and June. My old friend and trusted sound wizard Chris Coady mastered seven selections from the pile of tapes and helped congeal them into a coherent piece, which I named ‘Double Vision’ because I was still seeing double - a ruptured cranial nerve which was responsible for fusing the sight of both of my eyes into one image was still healing.
Throughout this past year I’ve repeatedly learned that crisis can bring a much needed shift of perspective. Music was there for me when I needed it most and once again saved my life. It’s in this spirit that I offer this tape - as a sanctuary, a space where time stands still , and as an aid to relaxation, to meditation, to creative pursuits; a soundtrack to inner exploration.
EMAIL me at AlexLaurence @ AOL (dot) com "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, inf...
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