just got back from this terms first College Republican meeting. It wasn't as gory as i had hoped. there were about 30 people, with a lady chairwoman clearly being groomed to be some republican intern somewhere. lots of 'tabling quips' (rehashed stories of being abused or loved whilst doing stalls), 'hippie' bashing, pleas for help canvassing in San Diego next month, and only one mention of the KKK ("we should have all worn suits or em.... white hoods to scare all the new people.... errr bad joke"). then the local candidate came in with pizza and coke and made a speech about the 'big tent' of the republican party and 'moderate, reagan like republicanism' "who freed slaves? the republicans. who gave women the vote? the republicans? who set up the national parks agency? the republicans" and so it went on. he even claimed the biggest section of the californian gay population were republicans.
i was hoping to be able to tell you how my second jazz theory lesson went, at which we were due to be playing a blues infront of the rest of the class. i have been practicing for a few days, asking many people what they thought the idea of the blues distilled into, reading books and tying myself into knots (after that disastrous clarinet audition i wasn't feeling very confident). however, max found a grand piano in one of the dining halls (which naturally has a wicked acoustic) and three nights ago we went there and just RIPPED and all my fears were assuaged. it was really really special man, i felt like a flying fish, fluttering around between the piano chords and finding the path of least resistance and then occasionally going for it and jumping high out of the water and holding it for as long as the atmosphere would allow and then plunging back down again and then shutting up for a while. it just sounded rounded and exciting and beautiful in parts. we went to a different piano last night with some more structured chord progressions in mind and it was a different thing we were producing but as good in different ways. for years i have been unable to make the leap between playing my own blues scale with bits of chromaticism and vaguely following the accompaniment to be able to place individual notes with specific functions and movements into the music, and therefore to extend and/or implicate the harmony of what is going on, but things are starting to fall into place now and the clarinet is looking more like a piano in my head. which makes ben a very excited boy. but anyway, the it is so lucky that i have winded up with a great piano player that is also a great person living one and a bit metres below me (he is on the bottom bunk). he is very unassuming, but you can tell he has grown up in a very stimulated environment. he just casually drops in things like 'oh, you know tom waits? yeah, he's my dads friend'. it also turns out he has a semi-broken heart, having split up with his first love just before he came here, even though she came here too! it is a long sad story with lots of victims (her brother died in a car crash earlier in the year and max ended up organising the funeral) but he still thinks one day their love will prevail. you;ve got to admire a person who is totally caught up in the mega-emotions of love and loss and is so cheery and nice you don't even notice.
talking of loss and death, a girl from the university jumped off a bridge to her death on saturday, word on campus is that her weed was laced... not very pretty man. she was 18.
but anyway, my final course choice for this term are jazz theory, music of india and 'UC and the bomb', all of which i have on tues and thurs (so i have mon, wed, fri off). the readings for jazz theory are pretty mental; it is the lectures own book and it is all about god and uniting the mind, body and spirit, and long metaphores about roses and the blues.:
"...thus, when our awareness broadens, heaven then becomes more than a place in which to either believe or refute; it can become a level of consciousness..."
"...spirituality is channeled through our spirit and uses the intuitive self and subconcious mind to translate and decode messages'
the lecturer is a really great musician, and it is great that he is taking 'jazz theory' to mean something more holistic that technical method, but i just get the feeling reading to his stuff that he thinks he is able to write down what is a really abstract concept and set of emotions in himself that are not necessarily universal. he also talks quite alot about god and implies that you need a connection with Him to truly feel the ;'creative spirit'. but anyhow, we will see what happens.
music of india is pretty cool- there are a few hundred in our class, compared to about 15 at SOAS, quite a change, and the lecturer is a great sitar player who plays in our lessons (for my fellow widdessians, alice went and chatted with the lecturer, told him the score and when he found out Widdess was our teacher, he apparently got well excited and told us not bother coming to his class cos we must know it all already from Widdess! apparently he is world famous inindian music circles. so he invited us to his graduate class, which i have so far sacked off).
UC and the bomb is very interesting- there is no teacher, it is all peer to peer learning with a couple of faciliters, which is great stuff except a bit slow as the facilitaters are hugely eager to make sure the consensus decision making is working, leading to lots of pauses. but we have had good discussions pon nuclear policy and more general foreign policy. they are an interesting bunch of people that take the class. one of the facilitators is a spitting image of Kai, and is called Kai!!!!!! the only other kai i have ever met. and even has the same hair, except longer and with dreadlocks piled on his head. we are all going on a field trip to a nuclear research facility in a couple of weeks.
went on a 'disorientation tour' with the general activists around campus, passing where they had got rid of military rectruiters, etc etc (the stop the war group were on a government list of subversive groups for a while) and ended up at this huge tree called tree 9 with loads of great branches so it was easy to climb to the top. it was MASSIVE and when i was half way up i thought i woudl stay there, but gradually i worked my way up and beat my fear and got to the top, where there was a beautiful view, a laminated photograph of the same view pinned to the tree and a interesting conversation about resurgent german fascism with a german feminist who was also at the top. but there were good people on the talk.
food is something that is occupying my thoughts quite alot at the moment. i was forced to buy a '55 day meal plan' as part of my housing contract, which means that roughly once a day it is 'all you care to eat' for me. and the choice is quite immense- every day there is pizza, pasta, burgers, chips, burritos and torillas, salads, all manner of sandwiches, industrial size tubs of mayonnaise, plus whatever food they have cooked specifically that day, like a meal or whatever etc etc and so in the beginning i was really taking advantage of all this (keeping the TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ALL FOOD OPPORTUNITIES mindset of SOAS) but then i started feeling greasy and bloated. but on the plus side, i put some bagels down my pants every lunch and then have breakfast the next day for free. it was also time for the occasional 'organic food vs cheap food' debate the other shopping day, with all the other factors playing themselves out (type of shop, type of things i needed, does coconut milk need to be fair trade?) but in the end the nicer food won, mainly because i was outside a nice shop at the time, but i went to safeway anyway because you can get 4 litres of tropicana for $5, (£3) with a clubcard. what can you do? but anyway, had delicious spinach, broccoli, strange mushroom, coconut and onion with rice last night so it was worth it i think.
on friday me and max went to see 'paradise now', a film about two potential palestinian suicide bombers, at a 'guerilla cinema' showing on the side of a warehouse on some disused train tracks near campus. we got there 30 mins late, and guess whose voice comes wafting down the train track? none other than george galloway, who is on the screen being interviewed about lebanon and being his usual aggressive self. jokes. the americans were loving it (he was wearing these red rimmed glasses). i was cringing till the end, when he really layed into the interviewer, asking her if she knew the names of any of the countless lebanese or palestinian political prisoners (hostages), but how gilad and every other isreali prisoner was known worldwide. she was actually speechless. that was quite good.
The main film was great- you got to see day to day life in palestine which was really interesting (what exactly does a refugee camp that has been there for 50 years actually look like? actually they never showed any of them, so i still don't know) and it also manages to be quite funny in parts, but the end is quite predictable.... infact the funniest thing was the redneck sat behind us who kept heckling- there is a bit in the film where the hero has to decide if he wants to spend the night with this beautiful girl or go and be a matyr, and he chooses the latter, and the redneck, completely missing the poing, shouts "VIRGIN!!!" at the screen. we got a good introduction to the proper political scene in santa cruz though- quite alot like the people at the square social centre in london i feel but a little more cheery and optimistic. there is some really good stuff going on- a 'free school' which is like a more formal skill swap where anyone can be a teacher (i suggested a make your own instrument workshop but they already had it!), also a 'trash orchestra' that seems quite radical and lots of copies of Harbinger and other good literature. we got plied with alcopops and patter though, which put me on my guard a bit (i guess they think we are new to the whole scene and need to see that it isn't all hardcore politics and anti-imperialists are humans too:)) but all good. it does have a radical small town feel, which is great. there was a demo in a town 20 miles away that is mainly populated by mexican immigrants on sunday, and i thought long and hard about going, but in the end it was 1pm and i was only half way through my clarinet practice, and i decided music just in these important moments need to be prioritised, even though i know the demo would have been great fun and a chance to see another side of the USA. they were talking at the cinema about a phone tree so when more raids happen on immigrants people can get down there quick and form a human shield or whatnot, so will be doing that i think if the time arrives.
despite all this, i am still yet to find or be invited to anything resembling a party. i think i am just not meeting the right people, perhaps because i live in a flat with a 'community assistent'. in a way it is good, because i am not getting too fucked ever and can play lots of music but still, it is irksome. i thought i could take the good pits out of american pie and at least experience the decadant american house party... maybe soon.
speak soon
love ben
Friday, September 29, 2006
Thursday, September 21, 2006
first letter home
It is11pm here on the west coast of america, where the voices are loud, the legs are long and the sun is strong. Today has been the first proper academic day for me- i had a music induction at 9am, followed by a placement exam, an audition for clarinet lessons, an audition for the UCSC wind band and then a beauracratic battle to find out which courses i could and couldn't do. The placement exam went ok- the hours of exercises whilst counting cars for SBC paid off for the harmony/melody bit of the exam, but as usual my aural skills were hopeless and my knowledge of Western musical history patchy. The clarinet audition, which i was half nervous about and half complacent about, went really badly. I haven't had lessons for 2 years, and though i have been burning my arse practicing all summer, it is impossible to replace the knowledge of a teacher, and it seems i have overlooked some fundamentals like controlled breathing, timing and poise. apparently i am letting the instrument control my breathing, rather than my breathing control the instrument, and as a consequence my tone quality is poor. The teacher, Mark Brandenburg (!), seemed entirely unimpressed with me, and even less impressed when i tried to talk my way into his lessons. It didn't help that there were half a dozen shithot annoyingly preppy players waiting with me, with their A clarinets (which are used in classical orchestras, rather than the standard Bb that i use) and unabashed boasting. so, although i havne't yet recieved the email from him telling me whether i am in, i very much doubt it. Which is a right bummer, because that was one of the main reasons i came here.
If you have clarinet lessons, you also have to be in either the wind band or orchestra, so i immediately went for my wind band audition. This went better, with a friendly teacher who went off one one about the time he went to york with a load of boys and got mobbed by St Margarets girls schools' girls. He was impressed with my sight reading and Mozart, and I think i am in. however, now that i am not going to have lessons (i think), i might sack the wind band off, even though they are playing Carnegie hall in New York in spring. what do you think?
It turned out after that I don't have to do any of the 'core courses', which are a grounding in western tonal harmony, and i can go straight into Jazz Theory and Computer music synthesis (though the latter clashes with Music of India, at least for this term) provided i sweet talk the instructors. I am in a funny situation- because none of what i am doing counts for credit either at SOAS or here, it is almost like i am unaccountable to anyone, which means i can do anything i like. i could even sack off music altogether and do latino studies, or environmental studies, or Hindi. I still might, though i have satisfied the minimum requirements for this term with just Jaxx Theory, Music of India and Gamelan, and will have lots of free time to write music, walk in the woods etc.
There are plenty of woods to walk in here- my college (where i live) is surrounded by huge redwood trees that extend ad infinitum. There are very friendly deer that forage about the place, and at night if you walk into the woods a bit the grasshoppers are deafening. I took a little wander last night with my Mbira and the first spliff of my stay, and it was lovely. I find I can only play my Mbira when i am feeling peaceful, otherwise i get impatient, but last night it was all good. Its funny when an inanimate object can give you a better insight into your mood (i guess the same thing happens when you choose what music you want to listen to). Suddenly a group of completely typical OCesque (not that i have ever seen it...) girls walked past, boys hot on their trail, and i layed flat so they wouldn't see me. Alice (the girl from SOAS who is also here doing music) described the conversation of many here as vacuous, and i think that is the perfect word, just useless and boring. I was feeling the pinch when i first got here in terms of lack of stimulating conversation, and it made me feel lonely, but as the days go by the interesting people emerge and all is well.
The lowest point was at our building induction (the college is spread out in buildings holding about 40 people each, with a 'Community Assistant'- i guess a bit like a prefect- who is there to help people by hindering their misbehaviour) where it was spelt out that there was to be no alcohol, no drugs, lots of inane whooping and no smoking within 25 feet of any building) where i felt like i was back on that summer camp in india last year where well meaning young adults in positions of low power are so niice but well annoying and treat you like babies. Then i reconciled this with the fact that most of the people here are 18, just out of their christian parents' bosom and very, very naive. So i got on with it, and it turns out that the majority of people get battered quite alot. Unfortunately I live in the same flat as one of the afore mentioned Community assistants so i can't even have a nice glass of wine with my evening meal.
But the past couple of days have been cool, and i have had many a good conversation. Many people here are eager to learn about the world and are open minded, which is really good. And the jamming is also very good. I followed the sound of a drum beat to a nice latino guy called Moises, and soon there were 4 guitars, a violin, a mandolin and a jazz Real Book to play with. We did a wicked and spontanious version of Miles Davis' All Blues, it sounded wicked, followed by some bluegrass, some bossa nova and long conversations about the LA hardcore scene.
But anyway, i am digressing. After my morning at the music centre i headed over to the east field (you can see all of these places at www.ucsc.edu) where they were holding 'OPERS', a US version of freshers fayre, with good BBQ food and lots and lots of stalls. This was a real eye opener. I smiled to see the US version of the Socialist Workers Party and (would you believe it) Workers hammer party peddling their papers and raising their eyebrows at me when i told them my political orientation. There were also stalls for many religions (people with tshirts saying 'i am a zionist'), ethnicities (including the 'mixed race' society, who were very vague when i tried to find out what they actually did), sports (ultimate frisbee is massive here, and everyone is surprisingly good at 'soccer'), the republican party (with a 6 foot cut out of Bush- i am going to their meeting next week), radio stations, campus publications, environmental groups et al. there was one really good group called the 'disorientation collective' who are very Crimethinc.y (www.crimethinc.com) and promise to show the underbelly of university life (it turns out every nuclear warhead in the US arsenal was designed at california's universities). There is a good political scene in santa cruz- recently the government rounded up over 100 illegal workers from the town (which only has 50,000 people in it) and there is a big campaign to fight back getting started which is fairly prominent on campus. they use the same slogan- noone is illegal- as no borders did back in london. How can i not get involved. On sunday there is also come guerilla cinema on a disused railway line somewhere which is showing that 'paradise now' film.
There were also lots of 'fraternities' on campus. if you don't know about them (which i didn't until recently), they are sort of American Pie style clubs that people pay to be a part of and in exchange get access to the 'best' parties, free alcohol, the chance to mingle with sorority girls and be nicely groomed for rotary club style adulthood. the ways people find to feel loved. anyway, next week is 'rush week', where all the fraternities have open free parties to try and get you to join them, and even though i have been warned about frats, i am going to go and experience it.
I am sharing a small room with two other guys, max and edmund. max is a proper quality guy from the same small town as tom waits (who bummed fags off his dad back in the day), into rock climbing, mandolin playing and making me milkshakes. edmund seems a complex character, lacking many a positive emotion, but i am working on him. blame the parents. next door is giancarlo, the afore mentioned community assistant and gym guy. he has realised i am his age, and is cutting me a bit of slack, but it is still irksome to have Authority, any authority, living next door. I initially thought opting for a cheaper, smaller shared room was a bad idea (i have almost no space to call my own) but i don't spend much time there- i am writing this email in the living room, where there is a nice speaker, a LAN connection and a sofa so it is ok.
Santa cruz town is wicked, i can see why it is a bit famous and not symptomatic of america at all, an interesting mix of small non-chain stores, beats, beaches, a funfair just like scarborough, lots of hippies and nice bus drivers (who have consistently believed my true story that i lost my bus pass on a bus on the second day i was here and let me on for free). they even have lots of charity shops (where i bought all my pots and pans) and thrift stores. everyone is friendly, but everyone is much more friendly when they are working for a shop you are in. someone offered to help me choose tinned tomatos the other day. i mean really....
so yeah, everything is turning out pretty kosher here after a couple of nervous days in the beginning. i am missing everyone lots though; there is noone i can hug properly here or get excitedly stoned with (cannabis consumption is done with lots of cool poise round here...). YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO COME AND VISIT ME. it is really a set of sights to behold.
If you have clarinet lessons, you also have to be in either the wind band or orchestra, so i immediately went for my wind band audition. This went better, with a friendly teacher who went off one one about the time he went to york with a load of boys and got mobbed by St Margarets girls schools' girls. He was impressed with my sight reading and Mozart, and I think i am in. however, now that i am not going to have lessons (i think), i might sack the wind band off, even though they are playing Carnegie hall in New York in spring. what do you think?
It turned out after that I don't have to do any of the 'core courses', which are a grounding in western tonal harmony, and i can go straight into Jazz Theory and Computer music synthesis (though the latter clashes with Music of India, at least for this term) provided i sweet talk the instructors. I am in a funny situation- because none of what i am doing counts for credit either at SOAS or here, it is almost like i am unaccountable to anyone, which means i can do anything i like. i could even sack off music altogether and do latino studies, or environmental studies, or Hindi. I still might, though i have satisfied the minimum requirements for this term with just Jaxx Theory, Music of India and Gamelan, and will have lots of free time to write music, walk in the woods etc.
There are plenty of woods to walk in here- my college (where i live) is surrounded by huge redwood trees that extend ad infinitum. There are very friendly deer that forage about the place, and at night if you walk into the woods a bit the grasshoppers are deafening. I took a little wander last night with my Mbira and the first spliff of my stay, and it was lovely. I find I can only play my Mbira when i am feeling peaceful, otherwise i get impatient, but last night it was all good. Its funny when an inanimate object can give you a better insight into your mood (i guess the same thing happens when you choose what music you want to listen to). Suddenly a group of completely typical OCesque (not that i have ever seen it...) girls walked past, boys hot on their trail, and i layed flat so they wouldn't see me. Alice (the girl from SOAS who is also here doing music) described the conversation of many here as vacuous, and i think that is the perfect word, just useless and boring. I was feeling the pinch when i first got here in terms of lack of stimulating conversation, and it made me feel lonely, but as the days go by the interesting people emerge and all is well.
The lowest point was at our building induction (the college is spread out in buildings holding about 40 people each, with a 'Community Assistant'- i guess a bit like a prefect- who is there to help people by hindering their misbehaviour) where it was spelt out that there was to be no alcohol, no drugs, lots of inane whooping and no smoking within 25 feet of any building) where i felt like i was back on that summer camp in india last year where well meaning young adults in positions of low power are so niice but well annoying and treat you like babies. Then i reconciled this with the fact that most of the people here are 18, just out of their christian parents' bosom and very, very naive. So i got on with it, and it turns out that the majority of people get battered quite alot. Unfortunately I live in the same flat as one of the afore mentioned Community assistants so i can't even have a nice glass of wine with my evening meal.
But the past couple of days have been cool, and i have had many a good conversation. Many people here are eager to learn about the world and are open minded, which is really good. And the jamming is also very good. I followed the sound of a drum beat to a nice latino guy called Moises, and soon there were 4 guitars, a violin, a mandolin and a jazz Real Book to play with. We did a wicked and spontanious version of Miles Davis' All Blues, it sounded wicked, followed by some bluegrass, some bossa nova and long conversations about the LA hardcore scene.
But anyway, i am digressing. After my morning at the music centre i headed over to the east field (you can see all of these places at www.ucsc.edu) where they were holding 'OPERS', a US version of freshers fayre, with good BBQ food and lots and lots of stalls. This was a real eye opener. I smiled to see the US version of the Socialist Workers Party and (would you believe it) Workers hammer party peddling their papers and raising their eyebrows at me when i told them my political orientation. There were also stalls for many religions (people with tshirts saying 'i am a zionist'), ethnicities (including the 'mixed race' society, who were very vague when i tried to find out what they actually did), sports (ultimate frisbee is massive here, and everyone is surprisingly good at 'soccer'), the republican party (with a 6 foot cut out of Bush- i am going to their meeting next week), radio stations, campus publications, environmental groups et al. there was one really good group called the 'disorientation collective' who are very Crimethinc.y (www.crimethinc.com) and promise to show the underbelly of university life (it turns out every nuclear warhead in the US arsenal was designed at california's universities). There is a good political scene in santa cruz- recently the government rounded up over 100 illegal workers from the town (which only has 50,000 people in it) and there is a big campaign to fight back getting started which is fairly prominent on campus. they use the same slogan- noone is illegal- as no borders did back in london. How can i not get involved. On sunday there is also come guerilla cinema on a disused railway line somewhere which is showing that 'paradise now' film.
There were also lots of 'fraternities' on campus. if you don't know about them (which i didn't until recently), they are sort of American Pie style clubs that people pay to be a part of and in exchange get access to the 'best' parties, free alcohol, the chance to mingle with sorority girls and be nicely groomed for rotary club style adulthood. the ways people find to feel loved. anyway, next week is 'rush week', where all the fraternities have open free parties to try and get you to join them, and even though i have been warned about frats, i am going to go and experience it.
I am sharing a small room with two other guys, max and edmund. max is a proper quality guy from the same small town as tom waits (who bummed fags off his dad back in the day), into rock climbing, mandolin playing and making me milkshakes. edmund seems a complex character, lacking many a positive emotion, but i am working on him. blame the parents. next door is giancarlo, the afore mentioned community assistant and gym guy. he has realised i am his age, and is cutting me a bit of slack, but it is still irksome to have Authority, any authority, living next door. I initially thought opting for a cheaper, smaller shared room was a bad idea (i have almost no space to call my own) but i don't spend much time there- i am writing this email in the living room, where there is a nice speaker, a LAN connection and a sofa so it is ok.
Santa cruz town is wicked, i can see why it is a bit famous and not symptomatic of america at all, an interesting mix of small non-chain stores, beats, beaches, a funfair just like scarborough, lots of hippies and nice bus drivers (who have consistently believed my true story that i lost my bus pass on a bus on the second day i was here and let me on for free). they even have lots of charity shops (where i bought all my pots and pans) and thrift stores. everyone is friendly, but everyone is much more friendly when they are working for a shop you are in. someone offered to help me choose tinned tomatos the other day. i mean really....
so yeah, everything is turning out pretty kosher here after a couple of nervous days in the beginning. i am missing everyone lots though; there is noone i can hug properly here or get excitedly stoned with (cannabis consumption is done with lots of cool poise round here...). YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO COME AND VISIT ME. it is really a set of sights to behold.
first letter home
It is11pm here on the west coast of america, where the voices are loud, the legs are long and the sun is strong. Today has been the first proper academic day for me- i had a music induction at 9am, followed by a placement exam, an audition for clarinet lessons, an audition for the UCSC wind band and then a beauracratic battle to find out which courses i could and couldn't do. The placement exam went ok- the hours of exercises whilst counting cars for SBC paid off for the harmony/melody bit of the exam, but as usual my aural skills were hopeless and my knowledge of Western musical history patchy. The clarinet audition, which i was half nervous about and half complacent about, went really badly. I haven't had lessons for 2 years, and though i have been burning my arse practicing all summer, it is impossible to replace the knowledge of a teacher, and it seems i have overlooked some fundamentals like controlled breathing, timing and poise. apparently i am letting the instrument control my breathing, rather than my breathing control the instrument, and as a consequence my tone quality is poor. The teacher, Mark Brandenburg (!), seemed entirely unimpressed with me, and even less impressed when i tried to talk my way into his lessons. It didn't help that there were half a dozen shithot annoyingly preppy players waiting with me, with their A clarinets (which are used in classical orchestras, rather than the standard Bb that i use) and unabashed boasting. so, although i havne't yet recieved the email from him telling me whether i am in, i very much doubt it. Which is a right bummer, because that was one of the main reasons i came here.
If you have clarinet lessons, you also have to be in either the wind band or orchestra, so i immediately went for my wind band audition. This went better, with a friendly teacher who went off one one about the time he went to york with a load of boys and got mobbed by St Margarets girls schools' girls. He was impressed with my sight reading and Mozart, and I think i am in. however, now that i am not going to have lessons (i think), i might sack the wind band off, even though they are playing Carnegie hall in New York in spring. what do you think?
It turned out after that I don't have to do any of the 'core courses', which are a grounding in western tonal harmony, and i can go straight into Jazz Theory and Computer music synthesis (though the latter clashes with Music of India, at least for this term) provided i sweet talk the instructors. I am in a funny situation- because none of what i am doing counts for credit either at SOAS or here, it is almost like i am unaccountable to anyone, which means i can do anything i like. i could even sack off music altogether and do latino studies, or environmental studies, or Hindi. I still might, though i have satisfied the minimum requirements for this term with just Jaxx Theory, Music of India and Gamelan, and will have lots of free time to write music, walk in the woods etc.
There are plenty of woods to walk in here- my college (where i live) is surrounded by huge redwood trees that extend ad infinitum. There are very friendly deer that forage about the place, and at night if you walk into the woods a bit the grasshoppers are deafening. I took a little wander last night with my Mbira and the first spliff of my stay, and it was lovely. I find I can only play my Mbira when i am feeling peaceful, otherwise i get impatient, but last night it was all good. Its funny when an inanimate object can give you a better insight into your mood (i guess the same thing happens when you choose what music you want to listen to). Suddenly a group of completely typical OCesque (not that i have ever seen it...) girls walked past, boys hot on their trail, and i layed flat so they wouldn't see me. Alice (the girl from SOAS who is also here doing music) described the conversation of many here as vacuous, and i think that is the perfect word, just useless and boring. I was feeling the pinch when i first got here in terms of lack of stimulating conversation, and it made me feel lonely, but as the days go by the interesting people emerge and all is well.
The lowest point was at our building induction (the college is spread out in buildings holding about 40 people each, with a 'Community Assistant'- i guess a bit like a prefect- who is there to help people by hindering their misbehaviour) where it was spelt out that there was to be no alcohol, no drugs, lots of inane whooping and no smoking within 25 feet of any building) where i felt like i was back on that summer camp in india last year where well meaning young adults in positions of low power are so niice but well annoying and treat you like babies. Then i reconciled this with the fact that most of the people here are 18, just out of their christian parents' bosom and very, very naive. So i got on with it, and it turns out that the majority of people get battered quite alot. Unfortunately I live in the same flat as one of the afore mentioned Community assistants so i can't even have a nice glass of wine with my evening meal.
But the past couple of days have been cool, and i have had many a good conversation. Many people here are eager to learn about the world and are open minded, which is really good. And the jamming is also very good. I followed the sound of a drum beat to a nice latino guy called Moises, and soon there were 4 guitars, a violin, a mandolin and a jazz Real Book to play with. We did a wicked and spontanious version of Miles Davis' All Blues, it sounded wicked, followed by some bluegrass, some bossa nova and long conversations about the LA hardcore scene.
But anyway, i am digressing. After my morning at the music centre i headed over to the east field (you can see all of these places at www.ucsc.edu) where they were holding 'OPERS', a US version of freshers fayre, with good BBQ food and lots and lots of stalls. This was a real eye opener. I smiled to see the US version of the Socialist Workers Party and (would you believe it) Workers hammer party peddling their papers and raising their eyebrows at me when i told them my political orientation. There were also stalls for many religions (people with tshirts saying 'i am a zionist'), ethnicities (including the 'mixed race' society, who were very vague when i tried to find out what they actually did), sports (ultimate frisbee is massive here, and everyone is surprisingly good at 'soccer'), the republican party (with a 6 foot cut out of Bush- i am going to their meeting next week), radio stations, campus publications, environmental groups et al. there was one really good group called the 'disorientation collective' who are very Crimethinc.y (www.crimethinc.com) and promise to show the underbelly of university life (it turns out every nuclear warhead in the US arsenal was designed at california's universities). There is a good political scene in santa cruz- recently the government rounded up over 100 illegal workers from the town (which only has 50,000 people in it) and there is a big campaign to fight back getting started which is fairly prominent on campus. they use the same slogan- noone is illegal- as no borders did back in london. How can i not get involved. On sunday there is also come guerilla cinema on a disused railway line somewhere which is showing that 'paradise now' film.
There were also lots of 'fraternities' on campus. if you don't know about them (which i didn't until recently), they are sort of American Pie style clubs that people pay to be a part of and in exchange get access to the 'best' parties, free alcohol, the chance to mingle with sorority girls and be nicely groomed for rotary club style adulthood. the ways people find to feel loved. anyway, next week is 'rush week', where all the fraternities have open free parties to try and get you to join them, and even though i have been warned about frats, i am going to go and experience it.
I am sharing a small room with two other guys, max and edmund. max is a proper quality guy from the same small town as tom waits (who bummed fags off his dad back in the day), into rock climbing, mandolin playing and making me milkshakes. edmund seems a complex character, lacking many a positive emotion, but i am working on him. blame the parents. next door is giancarlo, the afore mentioned community assistant and gym guy. he has realised i am his age, and is cutting me a bit of slack, but it is still irksome to have Authority, any authority, living next door. I initially thought opting for a cheaper, smaller shared room was a bad idea (i have almost no space to call my own) but i don't spend much time there- i am writing this email in the living room, where there is a nice speaker, a LAN connection and a sofa so it is ok.
Santa cruz town is wicked, i can see why it is a bit famous and not symptomatic of america at all, an interesting mix of small non-chain stores, beats, beaches, a funfair just like scarborough, lots of hippies and nice bus drivers (who have consistently believed my true story that i lost my bus pass on a bus on the second day i was here and let me on for free). they even have lots of charity shops (where i bought all my pots and pans) and thrift stores. everyone is friendly, but everyone is much more friendly when they are working for a shop you are in. someone offered to help me choose tinned tomatos the other day. i mean really....
so yeah, everything is turning out pretty kosher here after a couple of nervous days in the beginning. i am missing everyone lots though; there is noone i can hug properly here or get excitedly stoned with (cannabis consumption is done with lots of cool poise round here...). YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO COME AND VISIT ME. it is really a set of sights to behold.
If you have clarinet lessons, you also have to be in either the wind band or orchestra, so i immediately went for my wind band audition. This went better, with a friendly teacher who went off one one about the time he went to york with a load of boys and got mobbed by St Margarets girls schools' girls. He was impressed with my sight reading and Mozart, and I think i am in. however, now that i am not going to have lessons (i think), i might sack the wind band off, even though they are playing Carnegie hall in New York in spring. what do you think?
It turned out after that I don't have to do any of the 'core courses', which are a grounding in western tonal harmony, and i can go straight into Jazz Theory and Computer music synthesis (though the latter clashes with Music of India, at least for this term) provided i sweet talk the instructors. I am in a funny situation- because none of what i am doing counts for credit either at SOAS or here, it is almost like i am unaccountable to anyone, which means i can do anything i like. i could even sack off music altogether and do latino studies, or environmental studies, or Hindi. I still might, though i have satisfied the minimum requirements for this term with just Jaxx Theory, Music of India and Gamelan, and will have lots of free time to write music, walk in the woods etc.
There are plenty of woods to walk in here- my college (where i live) is surrounded by huge redwood trees that extend ad infinitum. There are very friendly deer that forage about the place, and at night if you walk into the woods a bit the grasshoppers are deafening. I took a little wander last night with my Mbira and the first spliff of my stay, and it was lovely. I find I can only play my Mbira when i am feeling peaceful, otherwise i get impatient, but last night it was all good. Its funny when an inanimate object can give you a better insight into your mood (i guess the same thing happens when you choose what music you want to listen to). Suddenly a group of completely typical OCesque (not that i have ever seen it...) girls walked past, boys hot on their trail, and i layed flat so they wouldn't see me. Alice (the girl from SOAS who is also here doing music) described the conversation of many here as vacuous, and i think that is the perfect word, just useless and boring. I was feeling the pinch when i first got here in terms of lack of stimulating conversation, and it made me feel lonely, but as the days go by the interesting people emerge and all is well.
The lowest point was at our building induction (the college is spread out in buildings holding about 40 people each, with a 'Community Assistant'- i guess a bit like a prefect- who is there to help people by hindering their misbehaviour) where it was spelt out that there was to be no alcohol, no drugs, lots of inane whooping and no smoking within 25 feet of any building) where i felt like i was back on that summer camp in india last year where well meaning young adults in positions of low power are so niice but well annoying and treat you like babies. Then i reconciled this with the fact that most of the people here are 18, just out of their christian parents' bosom and very, very naive. So i got on with it, and it turns out that the majority of people get battered quite alot. Unfortunately I live in the same flat as one of the afore mentioned Community assistants so i can't even have a nice glass of wine with my evening meal.
But the past couple of days have been cool, and i have had many a good conversation. Many people here are eager to learn about the world and are open minded, which is really good. And the jamming is also very good. I followed the sound of a drum beat to a nice latino guy called Moises, and soon there were 4 guitars, a violin, a mandolin and a jazz Real Book to play with. We did a wicked and spontanious version of Miles Davis' All Blues, it sounded wicked, followed by some bluegrass, some bossa nova and long conversations about the LA hardcore scene.
But anyway, i am digressing. After my morning at the music centre i headed over to the east field (you can see all of these places at www.ucsc.edu) where they were holding 'OPERS', a US version of freshers fayre, with good BBQ food and lots and lots of stalls. This was a real eye opener. I smiled to see the US version of the Socialist Workers Party and (would you believe it) Workers hammer party peddling their papers and raising their eyebrows at me when i told them my political orientation. There were also stalls for many religions (people with tshirts saying 'i am a zionist'), ethnicities (including the 'mixed race' society, who were very vague when i tried to find out what they actually did), sports (ultimate frisbee is massive here, and everyone is surprisingly good at 'soccer'), the republican party (with a 6 foot cut out of Bush- i am going to their meeting next week), radio stations, campus publications, environmental groups et al. there was one really good group called the 'disorientation collective' who are very Crimethinc.y (www.crimethinc.com) and promise to show the underbelly of university life (it turns out every nuclear warhead in the US arsenal was designed at california's universities). There is a good political scene in santa cruz- recently the government rounded up over 100 illegal workers from the town (which only has 50,000 people in it) and there is a big campaign to fight back getting started which is fairly prominent on campus. they use the same slogan- noone is illegal- as no borders did back in london. How can i not get involved. On sunday there is also come guerilla cinema on a disused railway line somewhere which is showing that 'paradise now' film.
There were also lots of 'fraternities' on campus. if you don't know about them (which i didn't until recently), they are sort of American Pie style clubs that people pay to be a part of and in exchange get access to the 'best' parties, free alcohol, the chance to mingle with sorority girls and be nicely groomed for rotary club style adulthood. the ways people find to feel loved. anyway, next week is 'rush week', where all the fraternities have open free parties to try and get you to join them, and even though i have been warned about frats, i am going to go and experience it.
I am sharing a small room with two other guys, max and edmund. max is a proper quality guy from the same small town as tom waits (who bummed fags off his dad back in the day), into rock climbing, mandolin playing and making me milkshakes. edmund seems a complex character, lacking many a positive emotion, but i am working on him. blame the parents. next door is giancarlo, the afore mentioned community assistant and gym guy. he has realised i am his age, and is cutting me a bit of slack, but it is still irksome to have Authority, any authority, living next door. I initially thought opting for a cheaper, smaller shared room was a bad idea (i have almost no space to call my own) but i don't spend much time there- i am writing this email in the living room, where there is a nice speaker, a LAN connection and a sofa so it is ok.
Santa cruz town is wicked, i can see why it is a bit famous and not symptomatic of america at all, an interesting mix of small non-chain stores, beats, beaches, a funfair just like scarborough, lots of hippies and nice bus drivers (who have consistently believed my true story that i lost my bus pass on a bus on the second day i was here and let me on for free). they even have lots of charity shops (where i bought all my pots and pans) and thrift stores. everyone is friendly, but everyone is much more friendly when they are working for a shop you are in. someone offered to help me choose tinned tomatos the other day. i mean really....
so yeah, everything is turning out pretty kosher here after a couple of nervous days in the beginning. i am missing everyone lots though; there is noone i can hug properly here or get excitedly stoned with (cannabis consumption is done with lots of cool poise round here...). YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO COME AND VISIT ME. it is really a set of sights to behold.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Humming
| Rich and Ernie have got a fake flower, that is only fake in so much as it is made out of plastic and does not photosynthesise. However, it is attached to a sugar/water solution, so hummingbirds like the one I saw that was humming in their garden in the suburbs of San Fransisco feel that, for all intents and purposes, it is indeed a flower. Maybe this is a lesson i am going to learn in america- who cares if it is fake if it does the job? certainly i doubt the word 'real' had anything to do with the ravioli i had on the flight from amsterdam to minneapolis, and less to do with the yanquee lady beside me who spraffed abotu the joys of mormon-only schools for 5 minutes too long. It was ok though, the journey, even though it lasted 29 hours from Boro to Frisco, involved many a suspicious immigration person and i wasn't allowed to smoke ANYWHERE in the US airports. travesty! what about freedom of choice. the airports of the world really hate smokers- in manchester, there were about 15 smokers in a room the size of a badminton court, with only a tiny amount of ventilation, so you could get yoru smoke fix without even smoking. in amsterdam you had to buy a coffee in a smoking cafe to smoke (in theory), and then in america you had to un-security yourself, go outside into the parking lot, and then security yourself back in again. gaybar. we made lots of smoke two (or is it 3?) nights ago, at the steve irwin memorial/lizzie and sam birthday/ me going away party, what with the fire, freedom liam's hot air and plenty of tobacco and tea smoke. after being a bit nervous about whether everyone would get on, it turned out really nice, and even liam did his bit by breaking the ice at the beginnign by beiong a drunken idiot and making everyone giggle. saw mischa, who i had my first ever travelling experiences with without my mum and who i haven't seen for at least a year. she always squirms when i ask the question 'whats going on', i think she thinks nothing is changing with her and it renders the question a bit redundant, but then there are many ways to ask the same question, and ofcourse she is full of worldly wisdom and new-music-tips. by 2am it was just me, liz, sam, lozz, behla, liam koed on a rock and adam, (who else) and i got mauled in a drunken game of duck duck goose. behla sang and played 'fugitive motel' by elbow, my fugitive motel, somewhere in the dustbowl if i......the other side of the world and it has been in my head as i have travelled above the dust bowl and to the other side of the world. |
the night before i wanted to jam, after a suggestion of north bay jamming by james g. i bumped into young billy bass and ryan on the way and invited them down to join sam etc, and from the moment we started the fire with only a few post-it notes for kindling i knew it would be a good night. if the right balance of instruments is there, and noone is the type for hogging the guitar with hours of covers, then quality musicians will at least provide an in interesting evening and sometimes, as on this occasion, also release sparks. the added factor of cannabis was also interesting, expecially as myself and a couple of others are prone to paranoia. the thing was, even though i got pretty paranoid at times, and i was sensing wother were too, the music just overruled everything and as long as it didn't stop, everything was fine and everyone was comfortable because HOW CAN YOU ARGUE WITH GREAT LIVE MUSIC? ryan and billy beatboxing together really is quite special, you should check them.
and now i am in san fransisco! fucking hell man, i couldn't believe it. was reading on the road (kerouac) on the way over, choosing it for its relevance, its page turning ability and the memories it invokes of making up part of our mini-bookcase in la gomera, and sal's first trip to frisco is a sad one ("everything was falling apart"), but a very romantic one none the less. and then BANG! there's alcatraz shrouded by fog, theres the golden gate bridge! theres the 49ers stadium! theres the 5 lane traffic jams! theres ridiculous advertising hoardings (you need a doctor who fits your personality"- no you don't!!!). well fuck me.
but i am tired, and this post is feeling alot like a ramble, even though i wanted to evoke the loveliness of my last couple of nights in scarborough. will try again tommorow maybe.
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