solange's melange

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:59:52 GMT

i'm off to a circus festival this weekend (wild animal-free, of course).

three days of circus acts from across europe...

Fri, 12 May 2006 19:37:01 GMT

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:40:12 GMT

it's out...
it's on shelves...
it's waiting to be read.

Waiting for the Dog to Sleep

interview

graffiti

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 15:47:29 GMT

someone long ago did some graffiti in my neighbourhood with a stencil.
despite all types of weather, these faces remain....

on a concrete wall near my building

and on the side of a green kiosk

rosie and violetta hit the big-time

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 15:30:37 GMT

i got my photos developed.

so far this is the only shot of "rosie and violetta" side-by-side: after our first show we were about to take off our costumes when it suddenly struck me that we should pose for a photo.
since then, we've had a lot of people snapping photos of us during shows on their digital cameras. i keep asking people to email them to me, but i haven't gotten any yet. so you'll have to wait for an action shot.

we've done four shows now. the first was on a sunday morning in an english-language bookshop/cafe (massolit). the second was at the american international school, performing for about 35 little kids (several classes together). the third was at the christmas party of the "cracovie accueil" group - a kind of alliance of french families in krakow. we were told by the organizer of the party that every french person living in krakow was there! the fourth show was at a private birthday party. last saturday was busy - we did the french party and the birthday party in one day, flying from party to party by taxi! we made a heap of cash and had lots of fun (and were given wine, good food and cake at each party).

after the show at the american school i was standing outside in front of a wall, holding my accordion, waiting for our taxi, and kristen told me to stand still so she could take a photo of me, since the graffiti behind me was cool.

after that i took a shot of her (forcing her to put her flower head back on).

hundertwasser: european twirling his moustache (1951)

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 13:55:08 GMT

hair dye in communist times

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 17:37:59 GMT

my friend barbara once told me that back in communist times hair dye was unavailable (or else hard to get, i can't remember which). when women felt the urge to dye their hair, they often used onion skin juice (you peel the skins off of some red onions and boil them to make a nice purplish-red liquid). i'm not sure how long you have to soak your hair in this onion juice - i didn't ask barbara for specifics.

after dying her hair in onion juice she went out to her doctor's appointment. unfortunately a torrential downpour began, and she didn't have an umbrella. the onion-dye turned out not to be very permanent. it ran down all over her neck and shoulders, and when she took her jacket off, she saw that her white blouse was completely streaked in the red onion juice, and she was embarrassed... i'm not sure if she dyed her hair with onion juice ever again. probably not.

the rosie and violetta show

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:19:45 GMT

so a week ago sunday my friend k. and i dressed up as enormous flowers, with big papier mache things on our heads that we made. there had been some heavy-duty stressful papiermacheing and painting at my place during the preceding three weeks. there were some moments when i wished we had made sure the costumes were ready FIRST before getting a gig date, since i hadn't realized how long the papier macheing would take. i hadn't made anything with papier mache for a long time. i think the moon pinata i made for my sister's birthday last january was the last. and making something that fits your face perfectly, and is comfortable and allows you to sing and smile (while dancing and playing an instrument) is a much more challenging task than i had imagined.

the day before the show the papier mache was at last all done, and dried (after several emergency procedures), but NOT painted, so we spent all day saturday quite stressed out, painting in turns and putting the flowers next to the heater to dry faster. luckily poster paints dry quickly. i kept having terrible accidents like sploshing white paint blobs on the red rose petals i had perfected earlier, then having to mix paint to get the exact shade of red again to paint over the mistake, etc. i was still feverishly painting at midnight the night before the show.

we were a little nervous because we had heard via a few different sources that we should expect a huge crowd! we had barely done any advertising, but i had taken a poster and some handbills to the "british international school" (where the children of foreign ambassadors and rich snobby business people attend school) and k. took a poster and handbills to the british school's competition, "the american international school" (equally snobby, just an alternative to the british snobbery), so we had the two international schools covered. i got a phone call from the librarian of the american school saying they were so thrilled about the show and had made an announcement at the school assembly about it and had photocopied the handbill for every single student! "what!!!" i said, shocked, "it's a small cafe we're performing in, i don't think your whole school can fit!" then i got a call from the british school, saying that the director had mentioned the show in the school's weekly newsletter! k. and i had been planning on going around some more and putting up posters at the british council as well as tons of polish public schools and libraries, but after these two calls we dropped those plans! we became terrified the place would be so packed we wouldn't have any space to do our show (there was no stage).

the crowd ended up being the perfect size - it was packed to capacity (with even people peeking in through the open door, unable to come in) but not so many people that anyone was crushed to death or angry about not finding a place to sit.

we had decided to be "crazy glamorous" flowers. so, even though our show was at 11:00 on a sunday morning, we were wearing fishnet stockings and sexy dresses.
getting the costume together was perhaps the most fun part of the whole thing. my whole life i've loved collecting crazy dresses and costume jewellery, but there never seemed much point to it, since i don't wear any of it on a normal day. my mom always told me i should get rid of clothes i don't wear.

but suddenly my pack-rat tendency came very useful!
k. came over to my house to discuss our costumes and she said, "i don't know what i'm going to wear! i don't have anything!" and i said, "never fear," and pulled out the huge suitcase in which i keep my collection of old dresses (many of them old value village finds, never worn, just waiting for the perfect occasion). we spread the dresses all out and i got out my boxes of crazy costume jewellery and we had a great time finding the perfect combinations.

i wore a red marilyn monroe-style wrap-around 1950s dress, with lots of red jewellery, fishnets, and red shoes. i had to be in red because i was a rose. k. wore a 1960's silver and blue minidress, worn only once before - by my sister at a new year's party when she was visiting me.

our show was all linked together by a script i wrote and featured several stories that were familiar to the kids (such as the gingerbread man and goldilocks) mixed with lots of stuff that was new (some melodies i made up, a weird song about birds that kristen taught me, among other things). this turned out to be a great way to do a kids' show - the familiar stuff gets them excited because they can sing/clap/dance along to whatever it is - but if the whole show was familiar to them it would be boring, so the new stuff keeps them interested and provides some variety.

this first show was for free, because it was fun for us, and it was kind of an experiment, we didn't know if we could do it. i've never performed for kids.

but we had tons of people coming up to us afterwards saying they were thrilled to finally have some english-language entertainment in krakow... and already two gigs have emerged from that first show. a kid in the audience is having his fourth birthday party on saturday and wants us to be there, doing the same show for him and his friends. and the american school has invited us to come perform for the lower grades (ages 3-7) this friday afternoon.

so dressing up, being crazy, and playing music is becoming my career, after all, something i've dreamed of for a while.

all souls' day

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 21:05:04 GMT

every year i carve a pumpkin and put it to glow on my windowsill feeling like i must be the only one in this entire country doing it. i feel nervous that i'm offending my neighbours, who tomorrow will be ritually mourning their dead loved ones. this year i feel, even more than ever, that maintaining my north american habits in this foreign culture serves no point.

but i love carving jack-o-lanterns....

i decided to try my hand at journalism. for a long time i've been wanting to write an article, and i decided, as "all souls' day" was approaching, to do a bit of reportage, or "personal journalism," on the subject. so i wrote an article, edited it a million times to try to "tighten it up" as much as possible, and shopped it around to the newspapers that are most familiar to me back home.

well.... the national post wrote back immediately (like 30 seconds after i had sent the email query) saying that they had no interest in such an article. the vancouver sun (whom i thought might be interested in publishing it in their weekend supplement) never responded, and neither did the globe and mail.

sigh. oh well. perhaps eastern europe holds little interest for vancouverites. i just wish they had given my article a chance. i didn't even get a chance to send it to them.
maybe i don't know how to write a good query letter.

anyways, i can't, after all, expect to know how to write an article that a newspaper would be interested in when i so rarely read newspapers myself! you have to know the genre inside and out to do it well.
i think my article would probably be more suited to a literary journal that publishes non-fiction, anyways, since, despite my "tightening up" it's still rather heavy.
not fluffy enough for the vancouver sun, probably. an old friend of mine who writes freqent articles for the weekend edition of the vancouver sun is a professional "puff" journalist.

so.... what is all souls' day like in poland?

On November 1st, the city of Krakow, Poland, will become silent and still. Not a single shop will be open, and the only people doing business will be the flower and grave-candle sellers on street corners throughout the city. Beginning in the early morning, people will make pilgrimages to the cemeteries. The cemetery visits will continue all day, even late into the night, and such great numbers of people will flock to them that many of the city’s electric trolley-cars, which are the main form of public transport in Krakow, will be re-routed to carry them, with “Cemetery” printed on the destination card over the driver’s window. All of this is in anticipation of November 2nd, All Souls’ Day - when it is believed in Poland that the spirits of the dead return to earth.

Like all religious holidays, every Catholic country has its own variation of customs associated with All Souls’ Day. Polish tradition doesn’t venture anywhere near the lively, colourful observances that take place in Mexico, where All Hallows’ Eve (whose origins are connected to those of Hallowe’en), All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are collectively observed as “Los Dias de los Muertos” (The Days of the Dead). There, the Days of the Dead are a time marked by festivities that include spectacular parades of skeletons and ghouls. In Poland, the Days of the Dead (November 1st and 2nd) remain a very sombre, melancholy holiday, the only link to the observances in Mexico (and other Roman Catholic countries) being the belief that it’s a time when souls return to earth for a visit, and a time to contemplate death.

In Poland, this takes the form of relatives gathering and having a large dinner together. At this dinner they often share their memories of deceased family members. Little shrines are set up in homes, with candles and flowers placed in front of photographs. Requiem masses are attended in church. Then, there’s always the trip to the cemetery. If relatives are buried in various places, several cemeteries must be visited.

On the first All Souls’ Day I witnessed in Poland I felt compelled to go to the main cemetery in Krakow to see what this holiday was like. I set off at 9:00 p.m. Getting there wasn’t hard - extra trams had been added to the route, arriving every few minutes. The tram was packed. When I got off at the end of the line, across from the cemetery, I was shocked by the huge number of people swarming through the gates. Police tape and barricades blocked the street off from car traffic. Police officers were stationed along the sidewalk every few feet, directing the thick crowds. People were dressed in sombre, but elegant clothes: men in dark suits, dressed as if going to church, and women in their best dresses. All along the street for many blocks there were temporarily raised kiosks full of grave candles of all different sizes and colours, and abundant with flowers wound into huge wreaths. I joined the crowd and let it carry me into the cemetery.

The cemetery paths were packed with people. And yet, despite the crowds, there was a thick silence in the air. Though we were walking through a pitch-black, moonless night, a bright glow surrounded us and continued on in all directions as far as the eye could see: the cemetery was ablaze with candles. People had begun placing candles on graves early in the morning, and it had continued all day long and would continue all night. The smoke from thousands of candles rose up and hovered like a strange fog far up amongst the bare tree branches. The graves of more notable Polish figures buried in the cemetery were heaped with flowers and ablaze with candles, often set up in elaborate patterns. Throughout the cemetery, people stood solemnly at the side of graves, staring at the candles, sometimes bending down to light more. At a monument to Polish victims of World War II, the vast collection of burning candles on the pavement surrounding the monument was breathtaking. Many of the candles had already burned down and were joining the sea of multicoloured melted wax bubbling between the glass candle holders. All around, people were bending over to add more flames. A huge crowd stood perpetually at the monument, singing hymns in unison.

Here and there throughout the cemetery there were solitary musicians. I could hear the ghostly notes of a violin rising up somewhere along a less-travelled path; after following the sound, I found a lone violinist standing next to a grave, playing against death’s stillness with all the force of his vitality.

Unlike most of the others who had a family plot to visit, I had no destination, and wandered the cemetery paths randomly, often ending up on narrow side paths with no other living souls around, with only the stone angels and candles to keep me company. Although I felt moved to witness this massive public ritual, an uncomfortable feeling remained lodged in the depths of me. In North America life has become so secularised that the idea of death has been shuttled off to the status of a distant rumour, something that one is never forced to consider with much seriousness, or for any considerable length of time. Poles’ ability to face death straight-on is astounding. The religious life of most Poles keeps them within a mental realm in which death is contemplated often, as something that our earthly life must prepare us for. But even for more secularised Poles who have strayed away from the Catholic Church, there’s still this annual holiday to remind them of the inescapable presence of death. For a North American there is something alarming in having death brought so close and made so tangible. My North American mind keeps balking, shying away from contemplation of what this all really means.

A newcomer to a country is faced with the difficult dilemma of whether to attempt to maintain some of his native traditions abroad, or whether to abandon them in favour of those of the new country. In the case of a Canadian in Poland, the latter is impossible (Polish culture is nearly impenetrable for an outsider, and one can’t hope to ever be more than an observer), and the former is difficult: in the case of Hallowe’en, for example, tracking down a pumpkin can be a challenge. A few can be found at “Stary Kleparz,” the outdoor market-place where genuine Polish peasants, with missing teeth, kerchiefs on their heads and dirt under their fingernails, arrive daily from the countryside (often in horse-drawn, wooden carts) to sell their homegrown vegetables.

The farmer chuckles as you handle the pumpkins, holding them up to examine the shape of each one. Carrying your pumpkins home, passing Poles with bags of candles and wreaths of flowers, supermarket billboards overhead promoting grave candles at extremely attractive prices just as they would microwaves or sides of beef, it’s impossible not to feel like a complete cultural enigma, a savage burdened down with pagan symbols, about to carry out an ancient and arcane ritual. How will the neighbours react once they see the illuminated representations of human heads staring out from your window? Will they call the police, suspecting satanic activities?

There’s a certain stubbornness you feel, too, in insisting on carrying on with a somewhat baffling tradition when you are the only one in your neighbourhood doing it. While carving the pumpkin you begin to wonder what the whole thing is about. What meaning does this ritual have? Defamiliarised by being removed from its context, ritual takes on a new significance, or at least demands that its significance be re-evaluated.

Walking through the streets of Krakow the afternoon of November 1st is like strolling through a ghost town. Everything is closed up, there are almost no people on the streets, even the crows seem to have flown off somewhere. To give you an idea of how unthinkable this is to a Canadian, I will give you the example of “Buy Nothing Day.” Somebody in Canada noticed that the act of shopping was the single motor that kept the entire country running, and hoped to subvert this through a national anti-holiday, a day in which people stayed away from stores. The day, however, has been a failure. In Canada a day without purchases has proven too unthinkable. And yet there I was in the historic and commercial centre of Krakow, and everyone had stayed home and closed all the shops for the day over an idea as abstract and intangible as death.

I have heard the opinion more than once from my Polish friends that November 1st in Krakow isn’t what it used to be, that the graveyards have turned into more of a fashion show than a genuine occasion to be with one’s family and contemplate death. When I hear this I want to tell my sceptical friends about the poor, failed “Buy Nothing Day” in Canada, or transport them to Zimbabwe, the Arctic, or even Vancouver, Canada, for just one November 1st so that they might be the only ones buying flowers and candles in little plastic cups (obtained with much difficulty), and therefore re-orient themselves on the value of ritual.

On October 31st this year I will boldly place my jack-o-lantern on my windowsill to glow as a lonely pinpoint of light on my street full of dark windows. And then, on November 1st I will join the cemetery crowds. Not having any family graves here and thus unable to take part in the Polish ritual, I have developed my own ritual: I buy one grave candle and seek out a grave that remains dark. This is difficult and always takes a while, but eventually I find a moss-covered tombstone with a worn-away inscription, belonging to someone no longer held in any living memory. I light my candle in honour of this unknown soul, taking part in this adopted holiday in my own way.

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:36:22 GMT

the film "gadjo dilo" ("the crazy stranger") turned out to be even better than i remembered!

a big reason why i enjoyed it more this time is because the film is half in french, half in roma (gypsy language), and when i saw it five years ago my polish was very weak, and i therefore didn't understand the polish subtitles when the gypsies were talking, and only understood the french (when the main character stephane talks). but this time i understood everything! there were even a few moments when i didn't catch stephane's french and had to look at the polish subtitle to understand it, so the film served as a good testament to the progress i've made in polish. a very satisfying experience.
on top of that, it's just an all-round amazing film... with great characters, a crazy plot, wild scenes, lots of intoxication and mayhem.

here are a few more stills from the film. i'm in love with both of the main characters - the girl and the boy (as well as the whole village of gypsies).

gypsies and other fun

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:43:29 GMT

it often feels like krakow has cast a spell on me with all of its crazy events.

the silent film festival is coming up: tons of flickery old black and white films, many of which are rather obscure and i’ve never seen before, accompanied by fantastic live music (klezmer bands, all-percussion bands, famous jazz musicians such as tomasz stanko).

the "chinese circus".... a poster for this suddenly appeared last week on a pole on my street. the poster has a huge photo of wild, colourful chinese contortionists and acrobats. the poster actually says: "sights you have never before seen!" and "first time ever in poland!" i can’t wait for this - it’ll be just a few days after my birthday.

a "Roma" evening at the mikro cinema: two films back to back about gypsy culture in eastern europe.

one of my most favourite films EVER, "gadjo dilo" by tony gatliff, is playing again!!!!! i’ve seen it only once, five years ago, so i’m anxious to see it again, and hoping that it’s as great as i remember. it’s about a young french guy who travels by himself to romania in the dead of winter to seek out gypsy music, and tape it on his little tape recorder. he falls in with a band of crazy gypsies in a small village, falls in love with a gypsy girl, goes to bucharest, etc. this film is a wild and drunken revel and lives out my own fantasy of going off to romania to live with the gypsies and do nothing all day but play my accordion and drink.

and...there’s an exhibition at the ethnographic museum of ancient beehives...(???) the collection includes beehives as old as from the middle ages. according to the brochure for this exhibit, the polish tradition was to decorate beehives with painting and bas-relief, and to make them in the shape of little houses, churches, windmills and human figures such as soldiers, monks, jews, gypsies and saints, especially saint ambrose, the patron saint of beekeepers. sounds weird, but i think i'll have to check it out.

siberia

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 13:52:07 GMT

this is the time of year when it's dangerous to go for a walk:
the chestnuts are falling like bombs.
groups of nuns in long black robes gather the chestnuts from under the trees. i don't know what they do with them. can they be good for eating?

my good friend barbara left recently for siberia. she moved there for the school year. she's normally a russian professor at the university in krakow, but she decided to apply for a post offered somewhere in siberia to teach polish. she was hired, and left. to fly there she had to pay about three times what i paid to fly to canada, because flights there are rare. so few people want to go there.

she's emailed to say that it's already below zero, and that everything makes her feel like she's gone back to the 19th century. there are conductors on the trams who come round to collect tickets.

she'll be teaching polish mostly to young adults who grew up in siberia but are descended from the polish people who were exiled from poland to siberia during world war II and stalinist times.

i'm in awe of barbara's ability to just drop everything and take such a deep plunge. not many people could go off to a foreign country where they've never been, completely alone. siberia, furthermore.

the fire

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 15:04:10 GMT

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 15:32:19 GMT

yay!
the the winks'
new album is out!
i hope my lil' sis will send it to me for my birthday.
i hope she'll go to their show this friday. it'll also be a chance to finally see hank and lily
- whose show we NEARLY caught when we were in victoria in the summer.

new films

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 13:50:40 GMT

polanski's new film opened yesterday. i can't believe he made a film of "oliver twist." i love how directors keep surprising the world. one never knows what to expect next from any of them. i can't wait til monday, when i'm going to go see it. or maybe tuesday. oh, yes, it will have to be tuesday since monday will be the beginning of the semester for the class i'm teaching. boy, back to work! my two and a half hour work week is gonna kill me!! :+}
it's nice that college doesn't start in poland til october. they love long holidays here. they know what's important.

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:19:26 GMT

i went to see "broken blossoms." god, i love jim jarmusch. it's such a relief when film directors you love keep on making good stuff.

such a sad, beautiful movie.
it made me want to run home to hug and kiss my little son.

it's a sweet pleasure watching american films in poland. so good to hear english, and see american life, which, on the big screen in a polish audience, seems strangely exotic. i usually try to go to the "american-style" cinema (where they sell popcorn and coca cola). i've gotta have popcorn with my jarmusch.

it's weird watching american films in a polish audience, because they laugh at the strangest things. i'm always acutely aware of american life seeming exotic through their eyes. at the beginning of "broken flowers" there's a scene of a black family's house - little black kids running all over the place, playing, making a lot of noise. the mail carrier is a plump black woman (!!!), delivering mail to the black family home. people all around me laughed to see this. black people are funny to poles. like clowns. it's really uncomfortable watching an american film in which stereotypes of black people are upheld - as violent, aggressive criminals. or simply as extremely happy, cheerful, crazy people always singing and dancing (a bit of this was in "broken flowers"). it all just solidifies the view poles already have of blacks.

fire and gargoyles

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:41:25 GMT

after dark, the fire-jugglers, fire-spinners and fire-breathers take over the main square. the flames rise high, and stone gargoyle heads gaze down from the edges of the renaissance buildings with an inscrutable expression in their eyes.

melodia wants an organ

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:15:46 GMT

a short while ago a guy announced on the vancouver indie community that he had an organ to give away to whomever could describe to him a project they'd use it for. i emailed him as soon as i saw the post and told him how much melodia dreams of having an organ, but that we're too poor at the moment to expand our instrument collection. i described melodia and invited him to listen to us on new music canada. he wrote back:

Hey Scotia,

The organ is already going to someone else, but if they don't come to pick it up or something, I've bumped you two to next on the list. I LOVE the music. It's exactly what I needed this morning. Maybe someday we can collaborate on a film project (I'm a director).

John

**************

it's when i hear things like this from people (even just faint little words of approval) that it all truly truly truly makes sense.

and making music for films is one of melodia's dreams. this was the third offer we've had for film soundtrack work.

too bad about the organ but hopefully whomever got it will use it well!!!

the real contest

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:05:24 GMT

there was a secret contest in all of this.....
it was to see which of YOU had the sharpest eye (or was paying the most attention).
for, you see, one grandma was entered in BOTH contests! yes, that's right! how could grandma frances run for both most beautiful grandma and ugliest?
in one photo she's elegant in a long white gown, smiling bashfully beneath a pretty parasol.
in another we see a full-on mongloid demented face.

so much can be done to change appearances. people recreate themselves in a million different ways.

grandma contest, volume 2

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 19:11:32 GMT

well, the votes have been cast. it seems like the grandma beauty contest has resulted in a three-way tie - they are all beautiful. preference seems to lean a bit towards contestant #1 (great-grandma margaret), however.

as a footnote to my last entry, i have to confess that not all my grandmas were easy on the eyes.

some were downright homely, in fact.

for example:

which was the homeliest? CAST YOUR VOTES!

grandmother beauty contest

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 14:56:37 GMT

some of my grandmothers were fantastically beautiful, judging by portraits they have left behind.

great-great grandma margaret

grandma bev

great-grandma frances

which was the most beautiful?
CAST YOUR VOTES!

bonjour poland

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 14:25:40 GMT

my sister has told me that when she watched me walk through the strange metallic doors at the airport a week ago, it seemed as though i were a time-traveller entering my time vessel.
quite frankly, that's exactly how i felt. even more so now. i'm not sure if i'm a time traveller or a space traveller - maybe a bit of both. poland is so far away. after a summer in the warm nest of family and old friends, in a city where everyone speaks my language and smiles for no reason, poland feels like a million light years away. well, this is the way i feel every time i return to poland. it will take me a little while to ease back into things. i can already feel things slowly becoming familiar again.

september first was an unfortunate day to leave vancouver because there was a whole swarm of fun things i wanted to go to on that upcoming weekend... the organ trail show at the candybar on thursday, juana molina with p:ano, the blim farewell show, a fashion show of divine dresses by the super-talented tyr of the winks (featuring my sister as a model!), and the victory square party where i'd get to see the book of lists, p:ano and the pink mountaintops outside and for free. sigh.

well, my sister was in vancouver and went to many of these things so i'm waiting for some full-detailed reports. she's my spy. my vancouver self lives through her while i'm away.

the countdown

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 02:26:45 GMT

in four days i'll be on a trans-atlantyk flight and my extended holiday will be over.
these were happy, sleepy, slow days of summer.

this was a beautiful, long summer of many adventures, lots of great shows, family barbecues, backyard cloud-gazing, roadside picnics and traintrack rambles, busking on piers and street corners, making odd friends who offered jobs playing music in strange situations, a trip to vancouver island and crazy-fun days getting to know old friends better and savouring the moments with my little sister before we're apart again.

but most of all i enjoyed the wide open hours of rest and contemplation
and the whole days i spent reading.

last wednesday

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 23:04:38 GMT

on wednesday the robot ate me played at the lamplighter.
an eccentric show: i've never before seen just one guy on stage, kneeling nearly the whole time hunched over the microphone that he held in one hand, facing down at the stage while fiddling with a crazy sea of knobs. his voice was nice.... dreamy and sweet, his lyrics funny, his guitar notes minimal but pretty. i liked it a lot but wished he would have played an accordion on stage like this:

this picture's from some other show. now he's got a beard. i think he had an accordion on stage but it was lying flat and he was somehow playing it like a keyboard. it was mysterious.

at the show i felt so happy because my beloved little sister was there, and my good friends the winks and joel an old friend of mine from school who's now in the band black rice (or he says he focuses mostly now on his band "joel and the last of the neighbours").

afterwards we saw the castle in the clouds at long last for real.

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 20:28:33 GMT

is it only crazy old freaks who play the accordion?

going to an "accordion festival" is enough to make one think so.

i'm not talkin' about cool indie kids who bring an accordion onstage to add a few notes to their songs... but the real, hardcore accordion fellas who play all their lives and know polkas, waltzes and the like.