We are getting ready for the show at the El Rey Theater.. and there are peacock feathers and tulle spread out on the table in the room, as Melissa and I are figuring out the costume. I am excited and nervous. I have much to look forward to. There is a lot of work ahead.

But I am also oh so sad. Moscow has been hit by a long and relentless heatwave. The air is filled with smoke from fires. Crops have been lost. Farmers – who already have had such a hard time in the recent years – have been devastated. My mom is not doing well: she is feeling sickly and I am worried about her. I feel helpless and conflicted with emotions stacking themselves on top of each other. I feel guilty for the cool breeze coming from the ocean through the window, as I am typing this.

And so this is my life right now, with the ups happening at the same time as downs. Pain holding Joy by the hand, as they both walk through the door of my heart.

my mom's apartment building through the smog caused by peat fires in the forests all around the city..  

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.