citrus

hiya  :) 

happy easter, hope it bounced like a bunny. i woke up on campus on easter
sunday before most other people and was on my way to sit by my garden and
take in the morning sun when i saw all these little plastic eggs poking
out from around and about, filled not with chocolate but with bubble gum
and condoms! way to go progressive 'campus living' staff. reality came
back though when i got to my garden- it is totally thriving, except for
the broccoli- about a month ago the first heads of broccoli came through
but i didn't know you are meant to pick them right away so i left them to
get bigger and they lost their fruit and flowered! oh well.

so yeah, apologies for not being in touch for ages, no excuses really
except that all my internet time has been spent devising worthy comebacks
for lizzie's acid facebook tongue, having a nice full day to day existence
and evenings rarely spent alone. it is hard to really pull out the most
significant
bits of the last couple of months, but i have been dreaming about home
alot so i think i just need to splurge.

so this week is the second week of the spring term, my classes are
jazz improvisation
latin american music
javanese gamelan
literature of the sea (!)
demilitarization of uni of california

pretty fucking chilled out if you ask me. i am back on clarinet for jazz,
it was frustrating to the point of angry tears to begin with cos every
time i try to tongue a note my false 3 teeth move about 2 milimetres, giving
a sort of unwanted glissando effect, but now i can kind of control it. i
am getting back to the level i was at before my teeth caved in, but this
term we are expected to PLAY THE CHANGES hard and fast, and before writing
this i have spent 2 hours trying to master just 6 bars of music. and i
haven't. lit of the sea is as cool as it sounds, got my leather elbow head
back on and think fondly of mrs mack, i have realised just how much the
sea is part of my history and my soul, right back to begging to be allowed
off school so i could go and look at the caught lobsters in the harbour,
seeing gavbob for (hopefully not) the last time byt he holbeck hall and
selling watermelons on the beach with sam "WATERMELONS, FRESH JUST SMELL
'EM"

before we started up again though it really felt like a time of flux-
after i finished my exams me and jono, this really class guy who always
when i ask on the phone 'hows it going' replys 'its going', dropped some
liquid
acid onto some sugar cubes and went to the beach; my gosh it was
something. (can i put the disclaimer in here that i don't in any way
encourage anyone to do acid and would discourage it unless they really
really want to and are by nature happy people who can handle themselves
and crazy things). i can't even begin to put it in words, but ill try

i lost my teeth in the sand and it was nice and sunny and then just as i
started laughing and couldn't stop
this girl ann, or sparrow to her friends, she is in my gamelan class and in
one of jonos
classes and is a bit in the ether like alida but at the same time nothing
like
her, but very very nice, she turned up, and jono had mentioned she might
ring but then she was just walking past on the beach, and she was quite
shocked because she expected people on acid to be uncontrollable and
crazy and stuff, but then she found my teeth in the sand wooooooooo but
the sun was hot and i lay back and the birds had vapour trails and
everything was SO BEAUTIFUL and shimmery and a huge waves of love kept
passing over me and then we went way out on the pier and looked at the sea
lions and fuck the sun was setting and the birds were flying around and i
was feeling a bit giddy and grasped onto the railing and watched the sun
set and it was so beautiful, the clouds were like the most delicate silk
fabric made up of a million colours as the sun set, rippling and
shimmering like they were on a holistic washing line, and as the sun set
and changed from yellow, through every colour, to deep blue, the clouds
seemed be be being sucked with the sun around the earth and i think i said
that everythings value should be measured in terms of this sunset,

i wondered if i would see the sunrise

and then a tiny problem when we saw tessa and patrick from protests and i
didn't have any teeth in and gave them huge hugs and smiles and didn't have
anyidea what to say, but then we went to the end of the pier and jono asked
me about scarborough, and sparrow talked about  the sperm
whale mating noises you can hear when you swim underwater where she lives
in northern california. and then to be a bit briefer, we went home for a
resupply, then back to a different beach and i lay back and
BLISSED OUT, it has never happened to me before and i couldn't imagine it
until it did happen, it was like every sense i had was roaring
YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
BLISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

like my ears had these tones in them, could have been the seagulls
singing, could have been the waves roaring, probably was actually now i
think about it, or the frogs or grasshoppers, and then my body was lying
face up with every bit possible of me in the sand, kind of with a small
rise in the middle so i was giving it a backwards star hug kind of, and i
could feel my atoms merging with the sand and back and forth, and the sea
in my nose, and if my eyes were open i could see stars throbbing and
dancing and if they were closed i saw crazy patterns and correlations
but i wasn't thinking of any of these things, i was just THINKING

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmarghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

blisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

but LOUD like it was a revelationa and tribal scream and groan.

and then back up to campus, jono had looked a bit sketchy when we had gone
back into the town before but now he was ok, we went into the forest,
jono gave a monologue, then we found a great tree and we told each other
stories, me
for the first time since i have got here and maybe ever to such length,
told them about the travelling things and described the details of the
golden temple and mcloed ganj to people who really wanted to hear about
it! and talked about the nature of story telling in general and how
powerful it can be and how it is a dying art, and then we went back to
mine and listened the first sigur ros album and ate soup and rice and
smoked weed and then i was saying how the album was like our acid trip,
and we were at the beginning of song 5, after lots of epicness and it is
sort of a slow swelling broodyness but beautiful and thats where we were
at, and then it goes crazy again shortly after and jono produced some
mushroom chocolate and then sparrow had to go catch a flight to seattle,
but she dropped us off at the pier, and we watched the sunrise as i
peaked on mushrooms and
.............................................................. me and jono
sat in the early morning completely alone under sleeping bags in silence
on a bench as the colour in the sky changed again from deep blue, mist,
clouds parting, rays from behind the hills, clouds vibrating and melting
and moving and changing colour and fuck every animal getting ready for the
new day, the seagulls waiting all along the rail to jump in first light
and get the fish, the sealions sleeping in a LATTICE WORK, about 15- 2Oof
them just under the surface of the water swimming in perfect formation
into each other , tessalating, and floating, asleep!, and a couple of them
barking, and mm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm a different bliss, and then when the sun
was up before it had come through there were clouds and mist, and it might
have rained, so we headed for the bus stop, but we got distracted by a
piece of modern art with rock in the shape of orange peel that you could
LIE IN and it was EXTREME COMFORT and if you lay in it one way you faced
the sun, which was just starting to burn through the mist, so we sat
there, maybe 45 mins, and the sun eventually burst through and it was
another sunnyt day in santa cruz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
then i walked home and felt

happy and full of joy

and i still feel that at a much more subdued level to this moment.

yeah, so basically it was really immense and once again, but even stronger
than before, i am going to try and give as much love out to the world as
possible, i had many a revelation, temporary maybe, sometimes it felt like
me and jono were
reading each others minds, we would just continue conversations we were
having seconds, minutes, hours before with oblique references and know
what each other meant. as i say hard to put into words (and now i do
theysound obvious but i was more like i felt them in my being rather than
thought of them logically) but

know your place. the american indians see it as key and i agree, knowing
your place in the world in terms of how you are just atoms and emotions
and just to BE and feel and notice and how we can't do it all, but we can
do it all by doing what we are doing, and homeand family and that most
beautiful and unique but fragile and difficult bond with those you love
the MOST MOST like your mum, but how that is all ok anyway and just to use
every second to try and work hard on it and on yourself

religion/spirituality- it doesn't matter WHO SAYS IT , but WHAT IS SAID,
if the most religious people from each religion actually TALKED TO EACH
OTHER
about a)what their great leaders said and b)how to apply it to today,and
thought of it like that, rather than CATHOLIC or MUSLIM,or MYSTICIST,
then where would the worries be????????????????????????

how powerful i am if i just tap into my BESTIAL ROAR

how, if i concentrate, i can step back from all the realities i exist in
and see them all in a circle infront of me and just be at one with them
all and myself at the same time

that it is all crossroads, NOW IS MY TIME (our time), when i go back to
england i
could do A MILLION things,

and maybe my focus on my music is blinding my to music

but the blissing out was the best.

is this all hippie bullshit? actually very possibly, the more i understand
where this whole eternal love thing is coming from
the more likely it is that it is all a delusion anyway and i should instead
be spending my time fighting for social justice and not
blissing out till the world can bliss out. the biggest thing i have been
grappling with recently is the kind of obvious fact that
working towards personal liberation and working towards social liberation do
not go hand in hand, may even pull in opposite ways.


and then the next morning it was time to eat a big omelette and clean the
hot tub anticipation of mr simon's arrival (simon is 1/7th of the flogged
pony, an old time beenthroughitalltogether friend and has a huge nose) in
the evening. wow it was like a little piece of england in my front room!
much joy ensued and that sunday we biked to san francisco- took 2 days, 80
miles or so mostly along the famous Highway 1 right by the sea, met lots
of crazy locals and had about 1000000 punctures on my back wheel, then
swapped sleeping bags and cereal bars for the comfort of rich and ernie's
glorious abode and meatloaf, ernie took us out for ONE POUND HAMBURGERS on
the morning we left, sat next to 2 cops with guns and daft talk, later in
the day we cycled
about 40 miles and still weren't hungry. oh and we went to alcatraz! to be
honest it didn't really seem that bad- no electric chair, no experiments,
nice views of the bay, musical instruments allowed at the weekend, all you
can eat food, a bit like ucsc really.

then we cycled back on the hamburger fuel, we were feeling great but the
sun was setting and there hadn't been a secluded enough beach for a while
but then SHIT! suddenly we come upon the this amazing idyllic beach,
complete with driftwood and axe for fire, deep maroon sun shimmering on
the sea and not an angry local in sight. there are some epic photos here-
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=87
690328

and all the time we had been away an idea had been brewing to do some live
sessions now i had the magic fingers of simon on bass and with access to
max's recording equipment ending as soon as i moved into the forest, and
so when we got back i invited all the most thoughtful and talented
musicians i had met since i got here for roast veggies and mashed potatos
and someone brought a case of wine and wooooo some intense stuff, at one
point we had drum, bass, guitar, violin, me on piano/dancing and a raucous
mc, i would put the tracks up somewhere accessible but they are all 25
minutes long... really top stuff though, certainly an avenue to persue
back in blighty.

and then jeff the guitar player drove simon and me to the airport in his
open top car, only sting in the tail was a really vindictive phone message
from my flatmate rose about spilling wine on the carpet and generally
being 'disrespectful', but in the last few months i have been learning to
try and hear what people are saying behind their words and absorb all
unjust anger with eye contact and give out as much compassion and love as
i can muster back. but that, and a note saying 'you should really start
washing up now your not paying rent' made me hasten my departure and the
same day i packed up/gave away/threw away most of my possessions, put my
rucksack on my back and walked into the woods.

and a new chapter started. actually arguably it began a few months ago, and
maybe that walk was the climax. people are just the key!
if you have good people around you that you connect with, then you no longer
NEED people, if you know what i mean.
at last i have met a few people who i have really clicked with which has
been cruxial. i
was starting to wonder whether it was something changing in myself that
was making me not able to fully connect with those around me, but then
i met zoe, a girl i had met a couple of months ago and swapped books
with- i lent her beautiful mutants by deborah levy, one of my all time
favorites, and she lent me the Stranger, a classic french novel, anyway
both books delve deep and unabashedly into the human psyche and
have a certain careless take on existence, so when we met again (she is
isas friend from childhood) we could ignore all the usual preliminary
smalltalk and have one long, tangent filled conversation  about everything
all at once, like dean and carlo marx when
they sit knee to knee with each other and see the universe as a
grandfather clock that they take to pieces bit by bit, study, and then
put back together again, and it carried on over the next week or two as
we went to crummy house parties and sat outside away from the debris
and talked with red wine sincerity, and we shared max's keyboard in
my house as others watched tv in front and made music that was abstract
enough to drive everyone else crazy i am sure, but honestly it was like
we were having a conversation, or at least making eye contact in
silence, and then one night a few weeks ago it was daz's last night
before he went home and we went to the beach to play drums, then after
we got told to shut up the only thing left to do was skinny dipping in
the angry sea, then later there was a storm and we went for a bike ride
at 5am, wet limp rollies in our mouths, joyful, and i hadn't even
considered any romantic possibilities until we kissed, and then didn't
stop thinking about them or her until she left three days later for the
east coast with only a note and 3 mix cds by way of goodbye. you can
hear her music at http://www.myspace.com/bellyboats , well worth a listen,
she plays
accordian.

so that was that but then i met jono and jack, a forester and poet who
helped me build my dwelling, and some other people and everything s kosher.
but anyway, living in the woods is COOL in so many ways.it is a spot about
10 minutes
into the low forest, someone has cleared a circular space about 14 feet
diameter, with a tree nearby that can be climbed to see all around. we
were originally going to build a bender, like a dome made of bent
branches, but the branches we found were a little brittle, so instead
we build a sort of lop sided teepee, elaborated with a tapering dome
stretching back into the forest between trees, enough for 2 people and
some stuff or about 6 people squashed in, to give you an idea of the
size.

i have been achieving a long held ambition of getting up before
11am on a regular basis, this morning at 730 birdsong interrupted my dream
of a scarborogh college rugby trip and a pretty girl and by 9 i had my
clarinet going in the practice room, it is so wholesome i could be in a
hovis advert. secondly, i can entertain people without worrying or being
noiad about people being bored, because there is nothing boring about
sitting round a fire in the woods ever! and i have developed a real taste
for whisky with hot water. and waking up outdoors just puts one in such a
great frame of mind for the rest of the day, and walking the 3km or so
back  home at night gives a real and actual way to escape the (i have
decided) pretty stressful and confusing monolith of an overtly capitalist,
big brothery campus.

and my head is clear for music making. on sunday i went to the beach with
max's top class condenser mic and recorded the sea and the birds for a
while, my personal project this term is going to be writing a sea song all
based on the semi-drone of the sea, using the best musical themes that
have come to me in the last few years that i never managed to turn into
full tunes.

there is, to temper the otherwise unadulterated joy of the woods, the
constant possibility of being found by police or campus staff and either
getting a huge fine (if i am there at the time) or having all my stuff
taken away and disposed of (if i am not there), or both. the latter i am
not too worried about, all the stuff i have is expendable and important
things like my passport are safe somewhere else, but apparently they tend
to search in the early mornings and the idea of being woken up by a pigman
with an angry face and a large fine leaves me cold. and i won't be awake
enough to give a plausible excuse for being there.

oh and i have pretty much decided to go to uganda in summer if i can
afford it, for the duel purpose of seeing the coolest twins in the world
and doing a bit of ethnomusicological fieldwork with rural folk musicians-
they play a type of mbira there and have the same fascinating issues of
folk music finding its place in a changing (but not changing that much)
society, also a huge hip hop and reggae scene there (i just can't take
either genre seriously in america, at least not among the rich white kids
that seem to always be listening to it round here- it is the music of
liberation and struggle, not fucking stoned beyond believing melodrama),
so lots to investigate. mariah and judith know a radio producer there i
can use as a starting point, and i am hoping to get something really
worthwhile down so i can merge easily into post-grad stuffiness later on
in my life.

i think i chatted before about Free Skool Santa Cruz,
basically a load of lessons, discussions and workshops put on by the
community for the community, from bike repair to anarchic medatation,
sowing to train hopping. last wednesday i went to an avacado core
carving workshop, loads of fun, every town should have one, and it
avoids the cliqueness that affects other similar non-heirachical groups
because there is such variety everyone can find their place, and
because it is so explicitly for everyone, everyone accepts everyone
else really readily, and the whole thing is a great way to radicalise
people- in a place where everythings value is measured in dollars this
can turn everyone on its head.

so yeah, that is just what has happened over the last 3 weeks or so,
before that there were some funny things too but they escape me now,
except for the night i met up with this guy i had randomly chatted to
before at drum circles, who told me people 'misunderstood him' as a
'sexual predator', we ended up going to play music on campus and, fuck
man, he was just far too intense with girls much younger than him, so me,
as a person who truly believes in live and let live, should i tell him to
go? should i warn anyone? should i tell him to sort himself out? after a
while i wanted to leave, and he wanted to stay, so i reminded him of a few
fundamentals and left, but i didn't really feel too good about it.

oh and shit! abby took me to Big Sur  last weekend(isolated coastal/hilly
beauty) and we
stayed with some of her friends on top of a huuuge hill overlooking the sea,
in the evening i was going to go to bed but the promise of guinness on tap
took me to the village pub
where everyone knows everyone, generations mingle happily and all the
underage kids (including me)
drink in the parking lot. after a while i ventured into the actual pub and
there is this cool
dreaded and beautiful girl playing guitar with older male cellist that i
played in monteray with before christmas!
well we didn't actually play together, but we were on the same bill, and we
had complimented each other, and
he remembered me! so i played a little penny whistle with them and started
getting properly drunk and before
i know it it is 2am and we are all driving in convoy up this ridiculously
steep hill with the fog rolling in, and then
stop on top of this ridge, you can see the mist circling around for miles
around on each side int he valleys,
we played- we shared the guitar, then cello, me on mbira, the guitarist girl
playing my penny whistle, i would have a million
dripping adjectives for this scene except i was too drunk to remember much,
except that the girl gave me some raw
broccoli to eat and i forgot to take my teeth out and the broccoli got
mangled in the teeth and they just stopped working,
period, until i bent them back into place the next morning.

yesterday i found myself counting the days till i get home, scarborough, i
think i am kind of ready, i want to be somewhere on the cliffs with the
kinder, i
want to see how much alfie, lee's baby, has grown, i want to shout at le
chat for becoming a piglet, i want to get large haddock and chips with
scraps on the foreshore, i want to munch on rasberrys in sams garden...
but oh it is 830PDT, me and jono need to eat pasta in the communal kitchen
and not leave a trace of our whereabouts.

ok, email me some home
love ben




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