Moscow continues to spoil me with spring weather. I woke up badly, though, because I had nightmares. Somehow bad dreams seem to have more weight here. I often dream hard, but the dreams last night were very vivid and left me stranded in that emotional space of unease, where you tell yourself it was only a dream, but your body and emotional self are shaken, and it takes hours to untangle the real from the unreal. I wonder if the city's age and energy make the dreaming so much more intense.

This morning I went for a very long walk and watched the sun rise. A baguette at Pain Quotidien can go a long way towards restoring one's spirits. The picture below is of the apartment building my mom lives in and where I am staying at the moment.

The record is sounding beautiful. It is starting to sink in that we are done…

'

I want to beg you, as much as I can,
to be patient toward all that is unsolved
in your heart and try to love the questions
themselves like locked rooms and like books
that are written in a foreign tongue.
Do not seek the answers that cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything
live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it, live along
some distant day into the answer.

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Two weeks to go until the record is done… fingers and toes crossed. Then I am off to Russia to spend a couple of weeks with my mom, who will be out of cardiological rehabilitation by then. And then the ride begins.

woke up feeling like I'd won the lottery. Then realized I really had: I am here, doing what I love, being paid for it, and working with people I admire. It really is one in a 1,0000000000, isn't it. And now I can see the bluest sky from my window, and the contrast of the red flowers-on-green against the blue, while there is a happy-sounding bird, providing a very involved and Bach-like soundtrack. Remarkable.

It is a very warm spring day. The adrenaline crash has receded, and now I am about to meet with my designer Missy for more strategizing.

ladies and gentlemen, this is how I feel today. Total adrenaline crash.
But I guess it could be worse, because my poor producer has stomach flu… We worked yesterday, but he was fading more and more, and alas, even the herbal remedies did not quite have the power to bring him back to full life.

Sometimes you just have to sleep. And sleep. And sleep some more.

But something is looking at me from the shelf. Oh look! it's the looping station. I need to practice a couple of my songs with it. There is also a new thing I came up with for the live show, which is a song I build from scratch, via looping vocals live. It is pretty neat, actually.

Let's see if I have any brain power left for today, or if I'll vegetate a bit… and resume tomorrow.