Well my dear friend Briana is now facing 35 years to life for a crime—the arson of a research lab in Washington state—she clearly did not commit. She’s a devoted mother, violinist, and radiant person. You can read about her at supportbriana.org.
This is absolutely insane, and fighting it is a tremendous financial burden on her new family. She needs help. Please donate to help cover her legal costs if possible.
Today was such a beautiful day. I awoke continually between 10am and 1pm & was finally summoned out of my exquisitely cozy bed neaering 2 o’ clock by a telephone call by a lovely friend intending to douse herself into the Pacific, the ossifyingly frigid Pacific, and would I care to join her? Of course I assented, though withholding my oath to similarly sadistically self submerge.
Tonight I saw a glimpse of what's possible--being an open channel for direct expression by the source of life. Music flowing, but also erupting, struggling, squealing torrentially through every open crack & fissure of a saxophone. A trumpet so profound & true, honest. Playfulness & joy. Musicians communicating through gestures & eye contact but creating, channeling, simultaneously, such exquisite love & truth that could only have been the unified, uncensored voice of something else.
I recognized what I witnessed, too. I have felt this channel in myself at times, & seeing it again, I think I know how to open it fully. It's not hard, it's right there. It's not some difficult path to tread, it's simply a willingness to be led, swept away along a swift uncontrollable current. We'll see in the morning--when I can actually make some noise--what bursts.
comment (2)Ok that wasn't much of an update for 22 days of life, so here's an excerpt from an email i sent a friend on the 21st (knowing that only exactly two people ever read this, i'm not editing very much out).
Last Saturday I went to hear Lumin & Shabazz perform & aside from being bloody loud, they were beautiful. Shabazz has such loving, joyful presence, & a kickin band to boot. I danced nonstop for hours directly in front of the speakers, with earplugs.
Came home at 2:30am to change clothes & go to an after party, & there's a package from my lovely woodland elf friend, Beth, a birthday present. She's a jeweler in Montana these days & she made me a ridiculously beautiful pendant, stormcloud stone & copper nine-pointed muse star & brass om, as drawn reportedly by George Harrison;). I mean, I was already really happy she's alive, but sheesh.
This morning i rush off to the dentist at 8:45am, crossing the bay on bart, so of course i didn't get enough sleep, nor eat breakfast (that's leading somewhere, i'm not just complaining). Dr. Gail Jang checks my bad tooth with an electric probe, declares it DOA. Need a root canal.
Now, a bit of background is in order. I am a medical wimp, to the marrow. Talk to me about aneurisms, decapitation, amputation, i'm likely to get light-headed. When, for a blood test, a clinic worker takes four drops of blood from my fresh-pricked finger, i feel faint.
So i'm trying to make an appointment with an endodontist for a root canal tomorrow, Dr. Gail's receptionist is on the phone with Dr. Wong's receptionist. I'm thinking, "dead nerve, breaking down inside my tooth." Start leaning on the counter. Not enough. Remy looks up from the phone, exclaims something--fuzzily in a low contralto quite uncharacteristic of her--as i slide towards the floor. Except i don't remember the sliding. I do remember hitting my butt. Everyone's suddenly there, hoisting me onto Remy's office chair. Alarmed.
I'm a boy. I shrug it off, fine. I'll sit for a second & be fine. Ok, see, i can stand up. And quickly sit back down.
Dr. Gail calls a paramedic, takes my blood pressure, 86/palp, i guess that's really low. I wait a minute, assure Remy i can make it the 5 steps to the waiting room so she can have her chair back. As i'm walking over, the paramedics three enter. "Hi." "Um hi. Who are we here for?" "Me," sitting down, finally. Blood pressure taken again, again. Oxygen.
My thought at this moment is of the Oxygen Bar, on Valencia St., where they play trance music & people pay $25-40 to breathe from oxygen tanks.
Two more paramedics arrive, three leave, a very nice Irishman does all the talking. Blood pressure, again, questions of diabetes (no), low blood pressure (see above), breakfast (no). Stand up? Sure, ok i'm sitting down again now. It comes out that i'm a medical wimp. Oh, lots of people have that, see blood & they feint. How about we check your blood sugar in the ambulance? & maybe we should drive you to SF General for you to rest there.
Ok, blood sugar, but you know finger pricks make me light-headed too. & i don't have insurance, so i'd rather not ride in the ambulance or recoup in a pay-by-the-minute bed.
The nice Irishman understands. Not only does he understand, he offers to take down only my name, no address. No bill to be mailed, thus. So i consent to the blood sugar test in the ambulance & two more blood pressure readings.
At this point, a non sequitur, in that the other paramedic still present knows my friend, former Voluta Vox accordionist Lisa Ekstrom. Tell her hi for me, he requests. I forgot his name. I always do.
Finally i'm on my way with a prescription for sugar & coffee to get the sugar up & the heart moving.
The rest of the day was anti-climactic, though.
Hmm, i feel like writing more, since i've just had some amazing times in the last two months....
In June i got a call from a friend who lives in Paris, asking if i knew anyone who wanted to sublet their room for 6 weeks so she could come out here. I said how about my room? So i spent essentially two months bicycling & camping in northern California, & going to music camps. At Balkan camp, my friends Matt Moran & Adam Good (both awesome musicians in Brooklyn) had brought over two virutosos from Macedonia (the slavic one), Goce & Angele Dimovski. Goce in particular plays amazing clarinet, saxophone, zurla, & basically everything else. & i got to study clarinet & zurla with him for a week. Phew. I'll try to put up some recordings soon of this man...
Then i had a few days off before going up to another music camp, called Sweet's Mill. This was a whole other level. It's almost completely unstructured, & I found myself surrounded by love & appreciation simply for playing music. I got to play a dual-clarinet klezmer set with David Julian Gray (founding member of the Klezmorim, the first klezmer music i ever heard, which inspired me to take up the clarinet, which changed my life entirely). Played balkan Rrom (gypsy) music with my pal Eva, Armenian music with Jim Karagozian & John Chookasian, did an awesome show with Aywah!, & perhaps most significantly, met Georgios Leftheriotis, a beautiful Greek violinist from Kalamata (now from Fresno) & have started playing with him. The rest of the time i was hanging out with my amazing friends Jade & Larry, swimming in the pond (home to biting silverfish; couldn't catch me!), or curling up on the floor of the coffeehouse with 15 friends. It's how life should be all the time.
Since it's how life should be all the time, several of us have started working on putting together a musicians' & dancers' living & collaborating collective. We hope to find a place (for 7-8 of us!) by October, hopefully in Berkeley. If you know of a place, please let me know;).
Enough for now. Thanks for listening.