This line from Madonna’s ‘Jump’ seems so appropriate… and rather strangely, it came on my iTunes Shuffle as I was packing yesterday. I say ‘rather strangely’ because it was exactly the tune I was listening to as I packed to come over here - and because, clearly, it resonated both times:

<Andrea grudgingly gives Madge more credit than she really wants to>

A crescent moon has just appeared above the KL skyline, and it’s just too beautiful.

I’m planning for this to be my last post on Lost In Transposition. Thank you for reading this blog. It’s been an amazing thing, to keep it up (although I think some people who have spammed me could have helped with that issue); and I’ve been so touched by the fact that people are reading it, and by your comments, and even by your lurking. Thank you, lurkers. And thank you B, for the inspiration to do something every day.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I round the whole thing off by talking about what this whole crazy Malaysian shebang has meant to me.

<The world forgives Andrea>

So…

Musically: I have learned for the first time how to truly articulate what I do. How to articulate about jazz. How to teach jazz. How to teach. How to teach men. How to teach men who are older than me. I was only half-kidding when I compared myself to the hero of Footloose: if you thought jazz was a niche market in the West, you should try it out here. Maybe there really are six degrees of Kevin Bacon after all. And I am degree one.

It’s been great to be appreciated by a venue. For the management to love what you’re doing, and to support you to the hilt. It’s so uncommon, and to have the rein and the support to do what you feel is right to do, has felt… well, wonderful. And I will desperately miss the opportunity to make music six nights a week. Because of this, I am, without a shadow of a doubt, a better singer now than when I came. My chops are better, my confidence sky-high. And I realise why yesterday’s experience at the street market, and the previous night’s on the bandstand - especially when we just jammed - meant so much to me. It’s because, feeling that way, I felt like anyone for whom music is a full-time occupation. Like all the people who I’ve seen performing who studied music and so take it for granted that it’s OK to make music like this, who stand up there with fellow musicians like it’s the most natural thing in the world. For the first time truly in my life, I feel that way about making music. And that feels incredibly liberating. It feels amazing. Thank you, thank you, T, for giving me the opportunity to feel this. It’s been a privilege. And a blast .

Culturally, I have come to a place where many values differ from mine. Where it’s taken as read that someone is religious unless you find out otherwise; where the ruling party controls the media; where dissent and protest and real analysis is lurking, and as the recent election proved, becoming ever-more powerful, but is not acknowledged nor encouraged as some sort of right. It has at once opened my eyes and made me realise how sheltered my experience has been up to now; yet also made me appreciate how lucky I am - we are - in so much of what we take for granted in the West.

I have come from a developed nation to a developing nation, and seen some of the differences which that entails. T and I talked just yesterday, for example, about how he just doesn’t have time to think about ‘big things’. He literally spends all his time thinking about his own situation, his own survival - and told me that that is very common here. People are literally trying to survive. Compare and contrast with the West - where the Roman Empire, for example, gave us infrastructure; and was later followed the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, so that Europe went on to produce Michaelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci and Voltaire and Mozart and Beethoven and so on and so on… While South-East Asia was simply trying to survive, let alone go to concerts and eat grapes. It’s really no wonder that even major capitals like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are relative cultural deserts (and by that I mean lacking in music and arts venues, museums, galleries and such) - or why as a result, why I couldn’t live here permanently. Unlike most ex-pats, it seems, I couldn’t just choose somewhere because of the weather and the shopping.

And a brief note about music and culture: I’ve realised that the high import taxes on CDs here utterly affects the musical tastes of the nation. Malaysians buy their albums in pirated form, where stall-holders on the street sell the latest CDs for 4 Ringgit (60p); whereas in record stores like Tower Records they cost the same as in the West (ie £8). The result? Everyone listens to the pirated music. Which means that they listen to the music people think it’s worth pirating. The big sellers: Kelly Clarkson. Britney. The Eagles. Michael Sodding Buble. No-one’s going to pirate a copy of Coltrane’s Giant Steps. So nobody in Malaysia is going to get to hear it unless they have money. Result? It’s difficult to get jazz gigs and clubs going. The audience just isn’t there. Because the audience isn’t listening to the music to the first place.

And finally, on the music and culture tip : this experience and this blog has led me to write for the first time about jazz, about the music I make, and as a result write for www.jazz.com. It’s led a heavyweight jazz critic and writer to praise my writing to the skies, and thats’wonderful. As some dead guy once said.

And finally, finally… The personal stuff.

Well. Erm….

I’m glad I came here alone. I think it’s led to all kinds of meetings and experiences that might not have happened otherwise. I’ve said ‘yes’ to just about everything and met all kinds of people I would never meet in London. And I will miss them terribly.

As I’ve explained recently to several people here: my life here isn’t just my life back home but with nice weather. It’s utterly, utterly different. I don’t meet CEOs. I don’t walk downstairs to a swimming pool. I don’t leave my towels on the bathroom floor, only to find them replaced by new ones on my towel rail (not unless some miraculous deal has been struck between my letting agent and my landlady).

I have, I think, managed the depression I’ve been going through. I have come here. I have jumped. I have made friends, made music, met wonderful people, had the utter privilege of doing something I love, night after night. I have realised how much I love my friends and family (and the musicians I work with!). And I have been myself throughout. And in the words of the song: That’s all.

My final view of Penang:

I am soooo tired. But I have to shower, pack (I didn’t really get much further than this yesterday), grab some lunch - and then head to the street market in Penang, where I’ll perform with R and his two kids. And then the long drive with T and C back to Ipoh; before spending the night there, and going to KL for the following day and night.

In a way it would have felt right to have ended this blog with last night’s post, of course - but there are still a couple of days of adventures left (including a final night in a hotel which really is just like the one in Lost In Translation, apparently ). So bear with me while I finish this over the next few days. Hopefully I’ll have some good photos to post. And hopefully some vaguely interesting thoughts. Although the former is probably more guaranteed than the latter.

Fresh fish and vegetables, cooked to perfection. I have effectively dined out for every meal, every day, for two months. Next thing you know, I’ll be saying that I don’t do stairs.

OK, so I’m not in denial anymore:

The concierge just came up to collect those DHL boxes; and I answered the door to him wearing a Chinese silk dressing gown and a headband. I swear I’m turning into an ageing diva; all that was missing was the smudged mascara and bottle of gin.

JazzChantoozieitsJazzChantoozieturningthefinalbendandapproachingthefinish
line…yesitsJazzChantoozieJazzChantoozieleadingthefield…butwaitaminute…
whatsthis?…comingupbehindJazzChantoozieitsReplacementAustrianJazzFilly!
ReplacementAustrianJazzFillyisapproachingJazzChantoozie…shescatchingup
…butJazzChantoozieisstillinthelead…JazzChantoozieisleadingthefieldwith
ReplacementAustrianJazzFillyaclosesecond…myworditsalmostneckandneck…
willJazzChantooziefallatthefinalhurdle?

Hopefully not.

Actually, a better analogy than a horse-race would have been a relay, with me handing over the baton. But then I don’t think athletics commentators talk quite as fast as horse-racing commentators. So it would have been a bit boring, to write that commentary.

So, hey ho. Here I am, coming into the final straight, indeed.

I have a final rehearsal with the guys in a few hours - I want to make sure our final two performances are as good as they can be - and in the meantime, may start packing. Or more likely: do some gift-shopping. On Sunday I go back to Ipoh, where T and C live (funny, that looks like ‘Clive’. Her name isn’t Clive, though); and then on Monday I go to Kuala Lumpur - or KL as everyone calls it here - to spend my final night at the Hilton (the Hilton, I tell you!), before flying back on Tuesday, and landing in the UK on Wednesday.

It really hasn’t hit me that this time next week, I will be back home.

Partly because I’ve been hearing about the snow; and that makes it all the harder to imagine. How on earth am I going to top up my tan?! Tell me that!!

I’m already expecting it to feel very dream-like, this experience. That I will be sitting back home, in my little (probably cold) flat, and be thinking: “Did that really happen?”. I know what it’s like flitting between New York and London seeing B, having two lives; with each place, and the life lived in it, suddenly and abruptly seeming like a dim and distant memory - even though it may only have been 24 hours previously that I was there. And yet conversely, each time I’d return to the place, whether London or NY, it would feel like only five minutes since I was last there, even if many months had passed between visits.*

Clearly, man wasn’t meant to travel quite such distances quite so quickly. But then man also engineered planes, so go figure, evolution fans.

As for the Austrian Jazz Filly - yes, the new singer arrives (with T) today to pick up the microphone-shaped baton. Or rather, to pick it up on Tuesday, after I’ve gone. Although you never know, I may call her up on stage to do a duet tomorrow night.

E (for that is her initial) won’t be performing with the same trio as me; and I don’t know whether it was my suggestion or what T had planned anyway, but she’ll be singing with two different, alternating bands. This is a much better way to work it, as it’s hard to secure players for a six nights a week (they normally have other regular residencies which, understandably, they don’t want to give up for a two-month booking); and also, perhaps most importantly, it means that he can book the guys who are already playing, and know and love, jazz.

So… off to the shopping mall for final, final-gift buying. There just wasn’t enough utter tat and Michael Buble CDs at the street market, y’know?

*I called this phenomenon TARDIBAR: ‘Time And Relative Dimension In B And Andrea’s Relationship’.

A silly thing happened today. I was looking at videos of old jazz performances on YouTube, and found myself going from link to link to link until I ended up watching a few scenes from a film I’ve never seen before.

(I think the sequence of events was Betty Carter > Charlie Haden > Charlie Haden & Pat Metheney > film clip.)

The film was Two For The Road - and the reason I was led there is that Charlie Haden and Pat Metheney, on their lovely album Beyond The Missouri Sky, played the theme tune from this movie, which is by Henry Mancini. Apparently ‘Two For The Road’ was his own favourite out of all the songs that he wrote.

But that’s by the by.

Two For The Road was made in 1967 and stars Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney as a married couple going through a bad time; and the movie traces their relationship in the form of flashbacks. Like I say, I’ve never seen it - I just gathered this from the clips on YouTube and from the write-up on IMdb.com.

But once again: that’s all by the by.

The reason I’m writing this is that one of the clips made me cry. And it doesn’t matter really very much what it was about… Because what I’ve realised is that I’m finding it difficult, these days, to watch lovers. Or actors pretending to be lovers.

I get up on stage and sing love songs every night; and yet I am yearning, longing for love. And feeling its absence so acutely that it hurts. I feel like I’m clinging to something, and barely hanging on to it.

It’s two years ago to the weekend that I met B.

And I miss him.

And my heart is at a loss. And I don’t quite know what to do.

Maybe I shouldn’t even publish this.

But what the hell…

Night night, all.

The way you know about a watermelon.

Check out the adorable black puffball dress I just bought from a boutique shop next door (new shoes, too. £10. A snip!). Well, I do have a wedding to go to when I get back…

Another strange day today.

Well, strange evening. The daytime wasn’t too strange. I went over to R’s and did that planned recording with him. This included a voice and piano version of ‘Love Is A Losing Game’ - possibly the first cover version of that song to be put to vinyl, or whatever medium people use nowadays* - and ‘Little Sunflower’ and ‘Route 66′ sung over pre-recorded sessions already laid down (as they say in the biz that is show) by his two kids earlier in the week.

The evening then started strangely when L was very upset about an incident at the hotel. His reaction was possibly, probably, exaggerated - but I’ve realised that he’s a very sensitive man, and feels things very deeply. And I admire him for those qualities.

But then I got upset (honestly, we musicians! Tcha!). Over the fact that the horrible incident - I can’t even bring myself to hyperlink it - hasn’t quite resolved itself in the way that I guess I’d expected, or at least wanted, it to.

I suppose I wanted closure, or even justice, about what happened to me, before I left. No, correction: any time. But ideally before I left.

But now it looks like it’s not to be; not just before I left, but at all. The perpetrator has, in short, got away with it.

I suppose that finding that out this evening not only led me to feel more hurt and wronged than I did before, but also brought back all the other feelings which I’d felt about That Incident at the time. Feelings which I had managed to overcome - or at least suppress - until now.

But again, as before, I don’t want these feelings to marr my time here - especially now that I am in my final week.

And getting on stage tonight and making music did wonders for that. I’ve said often that I’m never sad when I sing - and it’s true. Sure, I might get emotional during a sad song, and absolutely feel what I am singing at that moment. But earlier this evening, after I cried down the phone to T, I genuinely thought to myself: ‘Thank goodness I’m going to make music tonight’.

Because as anyone who’s ever done karaoke knows: music really is wonderful therapy. (Insert exception here).

*since Doris Stokes died.

*sigh*

Well, it is king-size, you know.