I'm off to New York for the next five weeks, visiting sisters & playing with friends in the subways (& at Barbès in Brooklyn on New Year's Eve). Briana's coming with me, which should be fun & intense, since we've had some tension lately. I think it'll be great, though, especially since Andrea (Tobias's subletter, who's wonderful) cursed me to find irresistible reasons to stay in New York....
I'll try to actually update this journal every once in a while.
Snowstorm in Brooklyn, my first full day here. The perfect winter-in-new-york welcome. In Max's bathroom there's a skylight; if the wind happens to blow hard while you happen to be, er, sitting (for any of the myriad reasons you might be sitting), snow falls on your (perhaps bare) knees.
I went yesterday evening to North 6 in Williamsburg to see Max & the Zagnut Circus Orkestar play. The security at the club was tighter than at the Oakland Airport, no kidding. Frisking, searching bags. Apparently kids have set off fireworks there at previous shows of the night's headlining band.
The Zagnuts were sounding really good. Paul Brown played bass (a great addition to the band to be sure, in case you don't know Paul); Timothy made something of a tupan debut & rocked it; Greg was sounding really sweet & soulful; & Max took one of the bluesiest solos I've heard on accordion in a long time. Ben Holmes has joined them on trumpet & is doing remarkably well--he didn't use any charts & has only been playing with them a month or so. Some nice solos too. My only complaint was that he plays a bit smooth & I wanted more rawness. In time that'll probably come, but he's a hot club kinda guy & might have to rediscover his inner drunkard for a while.
They opened for two other bands. The first was this extraordinarily loud punk band. The lead singer, in khakis & a buttondown, evoked (to my eyes & Greg's) an angry yuppie on ecstasy. I hear the lyrics are brilliant, but his over-amplified mumbling was completely unintelligible to me, so I left for falafel.
Returned shortly into the third band's set, the World/Inferno Friendship Society. They had something interesting there. They too were quite generous with the sound pressure level, but not nearly as grating. Sort of punk/ska mix; some folks kept referring to them as klezmery but I don't know why. Perhaps because there's an accordion in the band (along with three saxophones, two drummers, & bass). The singer was an evocative image. An updated 20's cabaret maître d' in sharp tan suit & a wry wit that refused to fall flat even when it perhaps should have. One of the drummers was also quite a character, screaming into her microphone as she pummeled her timbales, pausing mostly, it seemed, to correct her deranged appearance when she seemed not quite enough disheveled. She was having an obviously great time.
Escaped with Max onto the G train, which turned out to be an F train for some strange reason, which we rode to Park Slope (i think; the subways have enabled me to develop a horrible sense of the geography of this borough) to the Zen Center, which was hosting an all-night meditation in honor of the Gautama's enlightenment. After making what seemed a horribly uncouth & incongruent racket taking off our shoes & sipping water from the water cooler (glug!), Max & I joined the lines of awakened minds at 3am. I lasted until about 3:20 before the three shots of vodka from the evening's previous incarnation reminded me of the state of my depressed nervous system. After convincing myself a few times that I could stay awake & keep my eyes open, I went upstairs for shuteye instead. Just a nap. Of course the nap lasted until 7:30am, right before the closing ceremony & pancake breakfast. Mmm, fresh strawberry syrup.
Next time, though, enlightenment, god dammit.
Saw my dad for lunch today (yesterday technically, but I'm still awake). I just realized that he didn't ask me a single thing about my life. I made all the conversation, asked all the questions. Apparently, he's completely uninterested. Ouch.
Interesting, though, since I'd kinda been blaming our lack of relationship on my shortcomings as a correspondent. Since I've tended to lose contact with people not in my immediate sphere, I've blamed that tendency for the withering of various relationships, including with him. But now it occurs to me that he's partly responsible as well. Perhaps that should have been obvious (& would have been to anyone else), but it's a bit surprising to me. I'd had this story (mostly from my stepmother) that he'd tried really hard to keep a strong relationship with all us kids from set 1, but I suddenly don't quite believe that. On one level, I never did, since I've seen my sisters' relationships with him; but now I'm applying that to myself. I'm not yet sure what that means for a possibility of reality in our relationship, or for my desire to find that either.
Changing topics... Briana told me tonight, in regards to lovers, that I'm too picky, that there were lots of people that wanted to be with me & I keep not wanting them. My retort was, "what, I'm too picky because I want to be with someone I can relate to?" But perhaps I'm expecting too much from brand-new relationships, wanting devouring immersion from someone w(h)etting their toes & appetite.
Tomorrow (today), assuming I ever get to sleep & am not too deathly ill (contingent on sleep at this point), I'll go to the school where my pal Sarah Ferholt teaches music & teach a bunch of her special-ed kids how to put a clarinet in their mouths. First time for any of them, & of course several really wanted saxophones instead....