Baby It's Cold Outside by Emily Bell

Author:Emily Bell [Bell, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405950312
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2021-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

13. A Foggy Day

From: Andrew Power

To: Norah Jones

15 November 2010

Dear Norah,

Greetings from Los Angeles! I am sorry that it’s taken me so long to reply to your email. My big news is that I got the job working for the Very Well Known Composer (VWKC), and I’ve been here since September. With all the Wikileaks stuff in the news, I am paranoid about my email being hacked so I won’t use his name: I’ll just say: think Boy Wizard or Vampire Teen film: not those but similar level. And now I’m his assistant, or rather his second assistant (there are also two interns, a PA and a sound engineer). And yes, if you’re thinking Devil Wears Prada, you’re not wrong, especially as regards his critiques of our work. ‘Strings for a sad scene – ground-breaking’. I say this in jest, though. I am learning an unbelievable amount and he is very generous with his time. I am mainly doing orchestral mock-ups for him, plus taking notes, setting up equipment, booking session musicians and, obviously, getting coffee. But he has also asked me, and the two interns, to write some cues for him – the other day he had me play one of mine and he broke it down for me, telling everyone exactly what was wrong with it. You might think this sounds bad, but actually the others were jealous that I got feedback: I was suitably and genuinely grateful.

He works from his home studio, which is up near Laurel Canyon – that’s the road up in the Hollywood Hills where all the great singer-songwriters hung out in the 1960s. So many of the songs we played together were written there. I can’t even describe the place to you, Norah. You would love it. It’s twenty minutes’ drive from Sunset Strip, but it’s like being in the Rocky Mountains: all cliffside gardens and wooden chalets, and pools and trees everywhere, and views you wouldn’t believe. At night you hear coyotes and owls, and the sunsets are a sight like no other, because of all the smog. I really have to tear myself away at the end of the day. I’m living in a horrible apartment with three other guys in West Hollywood, all aspiring actors working as wait staff. We keep very different hours, so I’m generally setting out for work when they’re coming home. One of them suggested we could actually sleep in shifts and get an extra roommate to save money – I’m seriously going to consider it. What with my airfare and buying a car, I’m practically paying money to be here; but it’s all worth it, I hope.

I was thinking of you the other day because I was listening to ‘Blue’, by Joni Mitchell, on my way home in the car. We live about ten minutes from where her house was, on Lookout Mountain – it’s like a little log cabin in the woods. I think Blue is one of my favourite albums now, and I can’t believe I’d never listened to it before you recommended it.

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