well george bush intercontinental airport in houston, despite the name, wasn’t so horrible after all, at least not compared to its namesake… the trip was uneventful, as flights should be, except for all the stupid ads continental shows for the first 30 minutes of the flight.
now i’m safely ensconced in la hacienda, helping with tory’s mural project as rain permits (there’s lots of rain). today i taught a bunch of kids to play middle eastern rhythms on water jugs (beledi & malfuf, for those who are dying to know). i felt a little like tobias after we started stringing them together in a little composition. i’d started with a cuban beat— not much, bass holding the main 4/4 pulse, a clave on top of that, & one other simple pattern, but the teenage girls deserted as soon as the teenage boys showed up & the little kids couldn’t hold it together. the middle eastern stuff worked better.
we’re hoping (ok i’m hoping, i’m not sure the kids care, or even understood me when i tried to explain in spanish) to play for a puppet show here, as some other kids are making marionettes, other kids are writing a story (or 12, we’ll see) & others are painting backdrops.
yesterday we worked on outlining the mural on the wall in preparation for painting to begin, but then today the rain stalled everything paintery…
el salvador is gorgeous, by the way. even just outside the airport. everything is lush & green. interestingly, there aren’t many OTHER colors in the wild, like flowers etc, it’s just all green hills. the hacienda is beautiful but a strange environment. the community isn’t allowed into most of it, only the main meeting areas. there’s a swimming pool & whole back area that are closed off. yet we gringos (actually mostly gringas) have free run of the place. feels kinda imperialistic. plus there was a massacre of 50 people here during the civil war, right in the courtyard where we eat dinner, and that pall hangs over the place a bit. but the only war now is between us, mosquitos, & amoebas, and folks seem acclimated to history (what are they gonna do, after all? there were so many damn massacres & atrocities, if every place became a shrine everyone would just have to move out of the country).
anyway i promised to play some music with some of the others here (lena & carolyn ryder cooley, for those of you who know them) so i don’t wanna keep them waiting any more.