CURRENT MISSION

Davo! Davo! Daylight come, me don't wanna go home.

ABOUT ME

London-based musician, occasional traveller fairly new couchsurfing member. I am someone who is lucky enough to have had a lot of love in my life so far, and therefore rarely feel like I don't have enough warm vibes in me that I might be able to share with others. There's always more love we could all give of course, myself included. You can never give or have to much of it.

However, I am English, and to confirm a couple of negative stereotypes of my nation, that does mean a certain pathological fear of embassment and a modicum of sinicism in view of anything extreme or ostentatious do creep in occasionally. These are things which I will work my whole life to free myself of. (There are many positive sterotypes I could mention, by the way).

In short I like people, and being with them. I'm sociable but not extravert and normally pretty relaxed.

PHILOSOPHY

To recall the words of Stevie Wonder

"You say your style of life's a drag,
And that you must go other places.
Well just don't you feel to bad,
When you get fooled by smiling faces."

Perhaps, there are a few ways to interpret this. Perhaps there are more elequent philosophers who discuss this point (if so please let me know). But the people that I know that I know, that I'm most inspired to emulate, will trust trust and be generous to others. And if/when their trust/generosity is abused, it won't bother them enough spoil their enthusiasm to stop doing so in the future. If it doesn't bother you, it can't hurt you much. To acheive this state of mind requirwa self-confidence and of course plenty of "common [or not so common] sence" - things I sometimes have, and sometimes don't.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I became a member last year, having previously known nothing about it, and had a lovely time meeting people in Spain last year through this website. Looking to get more and more involved in the coming years.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I haven't surfed yet, though I have met people through my this site on my travels. Hosting is something I would definitely like to do in the future, though I cannot advertise my house here at the moment, as it is not my own.

Interests

I love people and places, history and culture, but music is inevitably the big one for me. It may be the international language, but it also has a myriad of dialects, and trying to understand these better through travel, exchange, listening, conversation, study and of course jamming is one of my greatest joys. Music is also a handy way of connecting with new people where many things might get in the way of other forms of communication.

I'm also interested in history, politics, football and theoretical physics, though I claim no expertise in these fields, so forgive me if, under cross-examination, I turn out to be a forgetful, politally inactive, two-left-footed ignoramus who can't remember how to wire a plug.

• culture
• performing arts
• concerts
• dancing
• partying
• politics
• traveling
• socializing
• music
• piano
• wrestling
• soccer
• dialects
• history
• physics

Music, Movies, and Books

I play piano, double bass and bass guitar in jazz (early and modern), funk, classical, rock, soul, blues, Cuban, Brazilian and eastern European gypsy stylings. I'm also currently taking steps to better understand West African music and Flamenco. In fact if you are interested in what I'm up to musically you can always have a look at www.myspace.com/daveobass [this is really not meant to be an advert]. It might give you a bit of idea what I'm into.

Oh yeah, and the other two...
Films: Monty Pithon's Life of Brian
Books: They are hard work for me. For that reason I tend to read non-fiction so as to gain the most learning from it, though that can be making even to even harder work. Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" is pretty good.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

What, do you mean apart from Alton Towers?! ...well actually I've never been to Alton Towers, but I still imagine it would eclipse all other experiences. Perhaps it's good that I haven't been then. Otherwise it might be time to pack it all in.

Here's two other things I've seen I would catagorize as amazing...

In Berefet, Gambia 2006 and Njiuwara and Berefet, Gambia 2008, the group of students on a course of indigeonous music I was with, were greated to a welcome parties that included a procession through the village involving pretty much everyone in it, spontaneous dance performance, communal dancing, drumming, an all-night wrestling contest, spiritual cermonies where men re-ignited fires in their mouth, a 70-year old breakdancing and juju-blessed skin was shown to be impervious to the sharpest of knives.

At uiversity in 2003 I attended a concert in the Holliwell music room in Oxford at about 11am on a Friday morning, which I had helped to create. The week before, I along with a handful of other composers were asked to compose music on paper in front of a video camera, whilst wearing a brain-wave sensor on my head, which was sinchronised to the video. The musical ideas were then matched to corresponding brain-wave shapes and kept as a kind of musical ideas bank. In the concert a single member of the audience was asked to sit on stage with a brain-wave sensor on their head and just think. As they did so the computer matched their brainwave shapes to similar ones in the musical ideas bank, and produced the corresponding music in notated form for a live string quartet who read from four individual computer monitors. The music was continuous, and to my ears, beautiful. If you don't understand why I think that was absolutely amazing, I would probably not be able to explain to you, so never mind.

Teach, Learn, Share

Things I like to teach about: piano playing, bass, playing, rhythm, harmony, composition, London's creative music scene, croquet, silly games.
Things I like to learn about: Just about everything except pretty much everything ever written in a tabloid newspaper or gossip magazine.
Things I like to share: Lots of things, particularly those nice warm things that we all particularly like to share.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, France, Gambia, Greece, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

United Kingdom

•