All I need - an invitation to play

sometimes all I need is to hear someone say 'that sounded ok'. Usually that person has to be me but sometimes just the mention that someone enjoyed a moment of music that I created is enough to change my own perception and right my listing sense of security.

And this week - while gettin the proverbial boat in order for a longish journey - I saw my sails fill a few times after a slagging energy lull at someone's recognition of my music, that seemed slight when I puzzled upon it's size.

while playing at the CSA (http://www.tucsoncsa.org/) this week I was invited to open for Leila Lopez at a party. I won't be in town for the date at Halloween but Leila is a great local songwriter and having the opportunity to open for her just as i prepare to leave town for two months had a profound effect on my sense of place in the musical universe.

I feel like I should mention a few other folks I would love to open for here in Tucson just in case someone  unfamiliar with the music here wants to look up some great music. Howe Gelb, Marianne Dissard - ooo la la - drama and some French, of course Calexico and the Silver Thread Trio, Sergio L Mendoza Y la Orquesta, ok a bunch more too Seashell Radio, Naim Amor, The Modeens but it would be really fun to do a date with Brian Lopez whose vocal and guitar chops I enjoy a lot.

anyway from a vagabond from the east coast who has enjoyed these past two years in Tucson that is my small and incomplete homage - temporary also perhaps, because it may come to be a longer thought in the future - to the music all around us here in the dessert.

Playing with Adam Levy on my birthday was

Terrific. We had a great time at the Hotel Congress on September 7th. Since then I have been running non stop to get the recordings ready for the tour in Europe and getting all the other details in line.

Departure date is 10 days away!

http://www.hotelcongress.com/2011/08/30/aaron-gilmartin-and-adam-levy-free-show/

Meaning

I find when I breathe in and out. It is all around. It is in the image of what I create and in the image I see before me in the church yard outside my window.

I am sure that I have meaning in my relationships but often they are hard to tease out into meaning too. That is I live my 50% of them and there is so little agreement about what they are about that meaning becomes a solitary event. I need more friends I do believe. More people to talk to every day.

I am very tired. Lets see what a nap brings.

The day it ended

, was also the day something else began and that is the only consolation, I was never sure what day that was, because I saw myself changing in relationship to the project on a lot of different days on different levels. I know that I want it to end without anger and with support for each other and that is all that matters really. There must be peace and finding it sooner rather than later is so important.
I will have to reach out and reach deep to make this the understood direction but I have been unhappy with the work lately and this is no way to work.
How the words come is so special a process I miss the simplicity of a conversation that is clear and easy for all involved, like lets make some music together, because it sounds good and makes us feel good, and then at the moment that one must find new things to say it is so much more than simple.

Why

do I go on doing what I am doing? It is the desire to see it improve.

will it? I dont know. I need to leave Europe Syrup and get to the activity of NY and the US.

Why? I dont know. It is essential and that is a thing I do recognize and need to follow. My bit of essential is what I follow.

Fun, Ferris Wheels and Frustrations in Paris

Just back from Paris. It took 11 hours by train, and if you count all the trains there were five. And despite its 11 dollar reservation fee (2nd class mind you), the Thalys was not the best of them.

Going to Paris for gigs, for Aaron and I, is like getting intimate with a bi-polar person. Wonderful, magical moments punctuated by hideous experiences that make us murderously angry.

Magical....
...was Saidi, our delightful Tunisian host, who came to the gig with his Lebanese friend Habib, drove us home, and totally educated us on a number of topics having to do with life in the Arab world. And Sandrine, our guardian angel who graciously gave us her apartment on Monday night after we missed the last train to Cologne. And the fans at the gig, who inspired us to great artistic heights, even though our sound system acted up and we could not sing on mic. There was singing our own songs for that audience and getting real, genuine shouts of approval and feeling it to be somehow bigger, warmer, truer approval than we've gotten anywhere else lately. There was walking through the Jardin de Tuileries and the Louvre in the light rain, and going up in the huge Roue de Paris (the ferris wheel in the Jardin) and seeing the endless slate rooftops of Paris stretching out in every direction and the great dome of Sacre Coeur and the misty, looming Eiffel Tower on the horizon, and Aaron taking pictures and me squealing in fear as the man at the bottom made the tea cup we were sitting in spin round and round every time we passed by him at ground level. And there was pain au chocolat...and pain au chocolat....and then a few more bites of Pain au chocolat. And seeing the OV version of Adieu Cuba with Andy Garcia in a truly magnificent performance that had us leaving the theater singing "Te recordare!" all the way to the metro where one fellow kept saying, "Chante encore! Encore!"

Hideous.....
The seats on the overexpensive Thalys....pleather, man. For 11 bucks second class. And the fights in the luggage area with a man and her father who were complaining about our guitars taking up space (they tend to do that, guitars) and, as if to prove us bad and wrong, asking angrily "Do you speak French?!" which is French people's way of saying, "you are a a stupid, ignorant American" to which I respond, no, but I speak Spanish and Chinese and a bit of German, at which point the man gives Aaron the "fuck you" sign and A. starts saying "Did you just say fuck you to ME!? I'm gonna send George Bush to get you!" And hideous was, and always is, the Paris subway, which was constructed in ancient times by Sadists and never humanized since. Endless passageways and stairs going up and down and up and down and not a ramp or escalator in sight. Then the angry Turkish guy that punched my arm crying "Le metro!" because I was not struggling through the ridiculously thin turnstile gate fast enough with my incredibly heavy and bulky luggage, and when I said angrily "Don't you DARE touch me!" spat, yes SPAT, a huge spray of spit all over my face. And of course I spat back, but being unaccustomed thank Heavens to spitting in a projectile fashion, my spit just basically dribbled down my chin.

So, the magic and hideousness of Paris over, we get on the train to come back this morning, and fortunately A. had stubbornly and smartly bought yet ANOTHER bag of croissant and pan au chocolat, so we munched, grateful to be returning to Germany, our slightly cold, slightly gray, usually unsmiling but ever so much more functional place of operations, and swore off ever returning to Paris --- knowing perfectly well that we'll be back for more.

And this is where it started....

Just to say that I am the same guy who was born in DC, educated in Waldorf Schools, Universitied in California, Hayward of all places, and inspired by Egberto Gismonti and Mario Escudero to study what Brasil and Spain had given to the guitar before forsaking all that beauty seeking for rock and roll: mhm.
AND ... Dorothy is the same woman who was born in Pennsylvania, educated by an amazing set of very well read parents and a little school in New Haven, CT of all places, inspired by Lao Tsu and Suzana Baca (or vice versa) to study Chinese and Spanish American culture, and all that they have given us, before forsaking both studies to tour around the world with me: yupm.
We are on our way back to the US, with a record half recorded, our voices never more in tune, our songs in our ears and three years of road behind us...ready?