2300 PST 4/2/07
i wrote a big chunk of this last week, but it got a bit out of hand and i didn't know if i was descending into banality so i am starting again. the open plan nature of the house means that i can still hear family guy from the other living room so apologies if there are too many random cut scenes below.
january has turned into february in no time at all, i only have real classes (gamelan doesn't count)on tuesday and thursday so the rest of the week always seems to merge together into a circuit well intentioned mornings and lingering nights. i guess after my accident i was a little more shaken up than i thought and, what with all the painkillers i was on, found myself unable to get excited or into anything and just hanging around indoors (it has been quite cold until recently when the sun has started being /warm) /but then being annoyed with myself for not doing more stuff. not having any top front teeth was a bit of a chore too- apart from only eating soup for about week, i had to deal with people looking at the gap in my teeth instead of in my eyes, and being like in that south park episode where there is a couple with arses for faces and they are like 'you may not have noticed, but we have arses where our face should be' and all the adults are like 'really?' haha. there are so few people with any sort of physical defect here, or at least among the people i see, if anything is slightly wrong there is someone to tell you how deformed you are and offer to fix it for you. free market and all that. having said that though people are generally really sympathetic, richie cooked me a fat meal when i got back onto solids and people have been giving me all sorts of drugs to make me feel better.
and a week or so later i got new teeth on a sort of plate/retainer type thing that i have to take out for meals and at night and which are a hassle to remember to put in. i am on my bike half way down my road and i am like 'shit i forgot to put my teeth in after lunch' and then i have the debate with myself about whether it is worth going back because after all i can't see myself and i am only doing it so other people see them, and why should it matter?' and by the time that has all gone through my head i am at the end of my street and it is too far to go back anyway. i didn't try and play my clarinet until a couple of days ago when i couldn't hold back any longer and tried; i can play, but it is uncomfortable and my mouth has no subtlety to regulate airflow and basically i sound like i did when i was 12 or something, all airy and nonsensical. its like ive been circumcised or something. and i think is going to be like this till i get new and proper teeth, which is at least until i get back to england and maybe later. my auntie tilly who lives in Delhi suggested doing the whole medical tourism thing and going to india for new teeth at like 1/10th of the price, which would actually be really cool, maybe in august. the silver lining has been the piano, which i have taken to ravenously. once i got the knack of the whole thumb over forefinger over little finger business i have been rolling, and it is sort of giving me a new insight into the fundamentals of the tonal system that only playing an instrument so logically set out can bring. Mum have a song called 'we have a map of the piano' and i sort of know what they mean now.
and then since i sort of get my head together i have been trying to say yes more and get myself out and about. trouble is, i still feel like a tourist here, sort of scratching the surface of the people here but still interacting with a certain air of novelty. for example the average conversation at a party is a little chat and then 'where are you from? australia?' 'england' 'ooooh, which part?' 'north east england, a place called scarborough' 'oooooooh my cousin/brother/friend is in london/manchester/oxford at the moment' or 'yeah i am 1/8th european' 'great' and then either they want to know whether we have Pizza in england, or want to introduce me to their friends as 'ben from britayn' or apologise cos 'when i am drunk sometimes i talk in an english accent, do you mind?'... i guess i shoulnd't be negative about it, it just gets kind of grating after a while. sometimes i tell people i am from my mothers' womb. this was happening a week last thursday when we had a little party, there was this girl there who i had met once before, very hot and rich in a barbie girl kind of way, who was making innuendos deeper than the mississippi that i didn't really understand, and she didn't really understand what i was saying, and normally i am obviously purer than drifting snow, but one thing led to several more and we wound 'making out' as they say here, and then i got invited to her 'south of the border' party (american teenagers go to mexico to get rid of their upstanding american morals for a while and go crazy, apparently it is really horrible, its like 'mexicans are bestial, we are better, but lets go to mexico and be bestial and throw money around') two days after.
so the day came and i went for a bike ride in the afternoon, one of those ones where you don't think too much where you are going and always end up somewhere exciting, and found myself at a lagoon with ducks and carp and reeds and then found some train tracks with the sun falling down the line in the distance so i walked down it in the sun balancing my bike on the rails (there are no trains on weekends) and got chatting with guys who were sitting on the rails with the american equivalent of special brew, red chief or something, and they were all well interesting, 2 iraq/afghan veterans with loads of stories to tell, one of them had joined the army to get out of prison early and he was like 'i joined cos i thought it couldn't be any worse than prison, but it was'; his friend got his shoes shined by an iraqi kid who then told his older brother who came and shot the soldier, alcohol is totally banned but there are opium dens on every corner, iraqi civilians won't speak to american soldiers for fear of death and one argument where an iraqi was like 'we want peace, you want war' and the american 'you want war, we want peace!' and we concluded that noone on the ground, 'allies' or iraqi, knows who or for what they are fighting for, that is all decided in the board room. so this guy got a heroin addiction and the army told him he wasn't any use anymore and just kicked him out, and here he was, intense but loving eyes, called Boston. its good to know that the conclusions i draw from the media are the same ones he draws from experience.
and then the younger of the three, Wyme, nose piercing, attractive half-mexican features , nice sheepskin coat and a million stories of hopping trains around the country, gave me a menthol and told me that crimethinc was for rich wankers and he refused to talk or ride with any of them, the punk and hardcore scenes around the place, the reformed ex speed addict in oakland who walks around taking 'citations' (like fines or whatever) from young punk kids and taking them to the police station and is like 'these are all my citations' and the cops just throw them all away, the roofs to sleep on in town and the mythical 'space bag'that he wouldn't explain to me. after a while of swapping stories the others went to get food and he took me to see a 'space bag'. i was all 'oh my god what am i doing hanging around in a big house getting high, talking shit and chasing girls when i could sack it all off right now and go train hopping all over the country! where have your principles gone ben?' and there is a main depot only an hour away, where kerouac is supposed to have hopped a train from in Dharma Bums, and wyme was going to florida in a week, it would take him 4 days if he got fast trains, a week if he got slow ones. faster than the greyhound!
so the spacebag turned out to be a 4 litre bottle of cheap, nasty rose wine. i was already pretty pissed and we found a couple of other people and went and sat and drank by the levee (!), leaning on a bank (the santa cruz credit union). and it is all "chugchugchugchug" and i manage not to be sick on the bus on the way home (we got off a few stops early) and then got home ready to eat and sleep but my flatmates are home with friends, and suddenly wyme is being a bit obnoxious, telling my flatmates they are arseholes and demanding alcohol and i am just too wasted to get a grip on what is happening, we cant' remember each others' names and my flatmates are not very happy at all, but i persuade them it is ok and i trust him etc etc and are we going to the party then? so with hard stares we all went, and what a non-event the party was, tall boys walking around with huge bottles of jack daniels offering to everyone except boys (wyme was all 'give him a shot, he's english' and we would share the shot), short girls squealing, the regular bass ofcommercial hiphop through unloved speakers, some hippies in the garden monging out, pringles, then wyme just about holding himself down, he eventually got in the hot tub, the girl who invited me blanked me the whole time, maybe she felt silly or was annoyed i brought wyme i dunno, but i was wankered and still taking my revolutionary high ground and couldn't take really anything seriously and jumbled around grinning at people and asking them stupid questions that i think i thought at the time were subversive.
the next day isa was hovering around so i asked her what was up and she was like 'i just want you to know that even thought everyone else in the house is pissed off with you for bringing that guy home but i understand' and that was all news to me, i wish people would tell me these things!!!isa said that sometimes if you take people from such radically different lifestyles they clash, but i explained that we had clicked and he was my friend and why on earth would they be annoyed? surely the biggest reason people don't get on is cos they don't understand where each other are coming from and the only way to solve that is to mingle? and if all these people who think they are so fucking liberal can't relate to a person that is the same age, comes from the same place, believes many of the same things and uses the same intoxicants but just lives life in a different way then what chance have we got? and wyme was the outsider and the one who had to make a good impression on my flatmats, and we all deal with that in different and sometimes stressed ways.
i spent the best part of the next day with wyme, he woke up and started drinking the beer from the night before, i didn't go with his 'stop the hangover with more beer' logic, even though i have heard it alot lately. he showed me myspace videos of him riding trains, amazing stuff, the most amazing vistas and the most scary looking lattice bottomed carriages, called 'suicide cars', then pictures of the train hopping crowd being drunk in various places, one on the day some hippies had paid for them to fight each other in beer, the experience of the photos heightened by the stale beer and sick smell emanating from wyme, i offered to wash his clothes or for him to shower and he was positively offended. but it was a bright sunny day and we walked back down into town and chatted, a teenager asked him if he could buy him alcohol so he recruited someone (wyme is only 19) and took the kid and his four new beers back to the train tracks by a big carriage containing timber and drank half of them trying to persuade the kid to drink with him till the punk gig that evening, the kid said his dad wouldn't be cool if he came home pissed, wyme told him it would matter because he would be too pissed by that time to care what his dad thought, i sat on top of the carriage face in the sun and smoked, realising that wyme just couldn't hack being alone and drinking alone, to the point where he was trying to be a 14 year old kid'sfriend even though he was being the cool guy. my excitement of the magical plaes and people to be found on trains was slowly dissipating (apparently you never ride with someone you have only just met incase they try and kill you, apparently there are some pityless people out there and who is going to find your body in the middle of nowhere when it is chucked off a train?), it felt like wyme was running from something, rather than searching for something. there is a train a day that runs through santa cruz though, and i will soon be shown the ropes.
and then the week rolled by and then was a double party for tito and emily, both my flatmates who had birthdays that week. tito's friend daz had come over from england, a great guy tito met in amsterdam from bournemouth, spoke like jason and looked a little like scouse pete, into the fibonacci sequence and lots of bongs, top guy, but oh no tito and rose were arguing and then last night they decided they were 'just roomates' and tito took daz with him out of santa cruz for an undetermined time. oh no! me and daz were going to go explore the woods. but anyway, last night went to another party full of nice people, wasn't really feeling it but it was ok, very curiously there was a HUGE tv screen showing a pirate video of real people in nasty fights, happy slapping, people having their head chopped off, but mostly big ugly brawls. and there were people just monging out watching it. i thought it was a bit strange, then forgot about it. a little later a load of sort of (hate to say it) chavs turned up, they are called 'bros' or 'locals' here, big meatheads with caps at defined angles, acting a bit dodgy and sort of welcoming each other and passing out beers asthough they knew everyone there, i left the room, then there are screams and there is a massive brawl going on in the room with the BRAWLING ON TV int he background and this poor guy at the party is getting HAMMERED and there is blood on the floor and for about 10 mintues there is pandemonium with these meatheads with their loud girlfriends ripping digital cameras out of peoples hands and kicking and kicking and kicking and then they seem to be going and someone says one little thing and suddely about 5 guys and girls are all laying into this one girl, looked just like the police on rodney king, horrific, then the police came and the bros disappeared and ambulances came adn urgh, it was horrible. worse, when the police came they immediately sealed off a house, knowing full well all the incriminating stuff inside, apparently this is the first time anyone has experiences this, i guess it just isn't expected or planned for over here. so strange though that there was fighting on tv, and everyone just accepted people getting battered on the screen as entertainment, its a perfect example of how anything can be tolerated if it is seen from far enough away. it was like deja vous or somthing when there was fighting in the room, it was almost natural.
so yeah, those two weekends have made me question alot of things, mainly 'what am i doing?'. i thought i would immerse myself in whatever niche i found myself in when i got here, but maybe i should search for something dffereng? i really don't know. this weekend i made a soup with all the veggies i had neglected during the week, i found some cactus for sale in the mexican supermercado and put that in, but the middle is sort of like a gel, and very bitter, i think maybe i should have taken it out before i cooked it, but it is paletable. aside from my lovely flatmates here, i don't feel like this house in the suburbs is where i should be, it is unbelievable the amount of energy that is used, so many lights inside and out, so many gadgets that forget to get turned off, a hot tub that constantly keeps loads of water at 100farenheit... saw a duck in our swimming pool today and ran inside to get some bread to feed it but it turned out to be plastic... the high speed toaster with special bagel button is cool though. been lookin for a solution, and my friend knows a platform in a tree in the woods behind campus that seems to be uninhabitd, so i am pretty sure i am going to move out there when it gets a little warmer, maybe beginning of april. there is a big community of tree people up there, it makes so much sense i can't believe i didn't think of it before, if i want to make the most of the california weather, why live in a garage? also with the money i will save i have ordered a flute, very excited. it has the same fingerings as a saxophone, so once i get the breathing down it should be cool.
my classes panning out pretty well this term, we are doing alot about native american folklore and spirituality in my native american music class, so interesting to see the many similarities between the beliefs of other peoples outside the western diaspora, for example ben feder had that poem on the DUA wall last year from the I Ching- first line 'those who talk do not think, those who think do not talk', native american chiefs are meant to speak very sparsely for the same reason, and loads of buddhists i have read about take vows of silence. i had to switch to piano in my jazz theory class which was a bit nerve wracking, but actually lots of it is easier on the piano because of what i was talking about above, and i seem to be enjoying the lessons more even. we had to write a conceptual/chord skeleten piece for last week, i wrote a really nice chord progression and then a section where all the students and the lecturers (we all play the whole lesson) had to stand in a circle and play (with rough tonal guidelines) the vibrations they felt from the person to their left, whilst reacting to the playhing of the person to their right and everyone else, it sort of worked, in the second part everyone seemed to sort of breathe together so going to develop that aspect of it for tuesday. gamelan is great and very relaxing, i have started sudanese now aswell as balinese, only trouble is, and i hesitate to generalise, but some people just don't know the meaning of the word subtle, there are some instruments that are shared and so if someone is mindlessly hammering his part out about1 foot away from you it can be infuriating. but then sometimes my feet smell, so i guess it is give and take.
spectacleular american food
- deep fried pitta bread
- "half and half"- half milk, half cream
- peanut butter and jam in ONE CONTAINER
- slurpees- the real squishee
- soft drinks with little spheres of marshmallows inside
facebook- as much as i feel it is yet another way for people to sit on their arses and communicate without actually communicating, it has been so nice to chit chat with people i haven't spoke to for years and see pictures of them drunk and lairy with their new friends. the point of this blog, apart from a little self indulgence, is to get around the fact i am away from everyone i love for so long and at a fairly crucial time in our lives and if america will indeed corrupt me/enlighten me before i get back, i don't want it to be too much of a shock hahaha. but hopefully someone will tell me if that seems to be happening. so anyway on balance i got a facebook and listed my favorite music but not my hobbies.
isa leant me this book, Be Here Now, by Ram Dass, pulled me right out of a rut, i would definitely recommend it, even if you don't agree with it, would be very interested to hear what you think.
so yeah, it has been quite an up and down time, i don't feel like i am fulfilling the promise to myself of making the most of every day whilst i am here, i feel like i am sort of floating along, but things seem to be brewing again and hopefully exciting times ahead. judith asked me to /Please ring 0845 300 4433 to vote for amnesty for immigrants in UK. UK government is considering granting permanent visa or indefinite leave to remain for immigrants that are already in the UK legally or illegally. This will be tabled in parliament on tues. The more votes the chances. /
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so there is more i have to say but this is getting long again, so ill leave it here. see you soon, or on facebook
love ben
