Christmas on the boat

It is christmas day 2015 and too late in the afternoon to nap satisfactorily before it gets dark. Day 13 on the boat. I have wanted to write about what it is like here for a good few days because there is much going on both within and without, and a snapshot a week ago was so different from the one I will try and develop now.

I wake up sometimes with a vague panic that I don't know who I am. It is usually around 615am and the sun has just come over the hill to hit my body lengthways as I lie foetal on the roof of the boat. I open my eyes to the water, a dozen or so other sailing boats, and the hill itself, deep green, palmed, sometimes with an icing of mist. I grope sleepily for points of reference, a day of the week or the time in relation to the time I have to leave the house, or at least a curtain to open, and then take a breath and remember that things are not working like that at the moment. Or to put it another way, It is like climbing a beautiful old californian redwood. Each branch is a joy to climb up, with a great smell and a feeling of reaching an eventual goal, but if you look down you think realise that much of what you have learnt and your behaviour patterns on the ground are entirely irrelevant up here in the tree, and when you look up you can't see the end point, despite the fact that you know it is there. Now imagine that you don't know that the tree ever ends, and there is no one else in sight. Similarly, as I move through each day here it is delight upon delight at every turn, but when I take a step back and look to the present in the context of my past or future... well it is better to just stick in the present.

And so in that present I usually find the rest of the boat already up, with someone making crepes or slicing mango or back from the shop with some baguettes to eat with melted butter and fig confiture (we are on a french boat after all). In fact the food is quite special both on and off the boat. This comes in part from the fact there is little diversity of ingredients, but what there is of high quality – we are basically talking fresh fish, meat and fruit. A guest turned up to a party yesterday with a slab of raw tuna as big as my forearm instead of a bottle of wine. Dozens of ripe mangoes fall from the trees along the road and are eaten with limes, coconuts, guava, mexican cherries, star fruit, pineapple. The pineapple skins are fermented to make delicious cider. The lemons and limes 'cook' raw fish. Barbecues abound. My bowels were dubious at first, but have now embraced. This food thing, coupled with striking hilly vistas, ideal climate, warm ocean, and a friendliness of the people that is genuine and unbounded without being pushy or invasive (I have never had to wait for more than 5 cars to pass before getting a ride when hitchhiking into town) gives the feeling that you are in paradise. The weather is sun with light breeze and occasional cooling rain. The internet various between 'very slow' and 'off'. The waves in the northern bays are consistent for bodyboarding.




And what does one do in such a place? Well, the heat in the middle of the day lends itself to doing not much, but in the mornings I kayak around, play music, do the dishes, the odd bit of yoga, go walking in the hills. And everything takes a lot longer here: washing clothes, for example, took a whole morning- do the washing up so the buckets are empty, kayak the clothes and buckets to the tap on land, hand wash, row everything back, stop for a chat with another boat on the way, hear about a party, figure out a way to hang the clothes so they won't fall into the sea as they dry...and on. But nothing is a chore and all can be done in a (dare I say it) mindful way. My mind used to be occupied by lesson planning, getting from A to B in london, whether or not everyone in the band was going to show up for rehearsal, how to not be so annoyed at hipsters (they are, supposedly, human after all). Now the questions are 'how do I prevent my knife getting rusty' 'how can I arrange this djembe and calabash on the kayak so they won't fall into the water' 'what book shall I read next'... I am not saying the latter are better things to be thinking about, but it does make a nice change, and my contentment or lack of hinges on them in the same way, though there is an overriding sense of tranquility that I found hard to find in London.

One of the best things about being here, though, is the space I have reclaimed in my life for music. In London, the more successful my playing and teaching of music became, the less time I had to just lean back and Play. Here there are instruments, and time, and loads of musicians around the place. I feel that my improvisational abilities are weaker now than they used to be, but other aspects of my playing are more solid, and I have started improvising on mbira again, which I haven't done for a long time. A few nights ago, maybe four, I ended up jamming with an amazing guitar player, arabic maqam, both of us singing and playing, when we were joined by two local guys – Maori and Poi – who had played drums for one of the dance groups in the festival (see the last blog post). The next night they returned with their percussion and drums and we used their traditional rhythms as the basis for something really hot.

The following night I invited them for a meal on the boat, and knowing that polynesian hospitality, like iranian hospitality, has a 'give everything to the guest' mentality, I thought about what I could provide, and came up with: food, beer, other musicians, a party. So the next day was taken up with finding and transporting the right food, and letting people know that there was a party. It was like being in the penultimate scene of a winnie the pooh book. At sunset I collected them from the shore and the boats trickled in, some with musicians, some with rum, and the great thing was that everyone else spoke french, so my guests were able to communicate more freely than with me alone, and everyone became at ease, and I could focus on music and cooking supervision.

Romano and his accordion arrived and someone produced a tahitian ukelele (double stringed with no resonating chamber) and a guitar, and suddenly a few new dimensions and possibilities were added to the music. The marquesan guys would play a few songs, us accompanying, then they in turn would accompany some french tango or, at one point, the internationale :). Everyone was up for playing and had some form of instrument, and the subtle energy that rises and falls dependent on the collective consciousness of the group picked up speed until the feet started stamping, then dancing, then twirling, and the voices purred, then sang, then wailed, then laughed. I was enjoying myself so much, not having to be a 'host' and make sure everyone was ok, but nevertheless having managed to create my ideal situation – diverse musicians playing diverse music, everyone enjoying, and I could just play and listen and not have to talk to anyone.

The next day – christmas eve – Maori took me to his home where his wife and four children were limbering up for christmas. From what I gather, Maori came to this island 21 years ago, chasing a girl (now his wife) who was part of a very big/well known/influential family on the island. My guess is he had to prove himself, and he did so by building for them a beautiful big house, surrounded by fruit trees (and cashew nut trees – did you know the cashew tree also bears an apple/guava like fruit that is sweet and tasty?), learnt the local Marquesan language, won a few surf competitions and now drums for the island dance group. Some life.


The thing they keep saying to me is 'tranquil ben, tranquil' and doing a sort of 'pushing the palms down to the ground' motion with their hands. This is certainly the overriding philosophy of the island, which I would sum up as 'take it easy, but take it', but I am not sure whether they are telling me this because they want me to know that despite our limited language, we are comfy in each other's presence, or whether they sense in me a restlessness or seriousness or overanalysis (something people occasionally accuse me of) and are telling me to chill the fuck out. Or whether that is just their way of saying 'everything is cool'. Either way, I really enjoy their company. Poi is a tattoo artist and offered to tattoo me. I toyed with the idea and looked at one of his books of drawings but nothing really grabbed me, and then I saw how he had decorated the christmas tree and decided that, well, perhaps we had different aesthetic tastes.

The next day, christmas day (I am now writing on boxing day) we all went to church . Don't know if I have said this before but churches are one of the only places you can go for just a donation and see a true cross section of a community doing something that is an integral part of their identity, and be accepted immediately. There are lots of reasons besides a belief in the christian creed to go to church. This church was all decked out with palms leaves and brightly coloured balloons that said 'merry christmas' in english, and the music was a man with a guitar and a deeply resonant bass voice, with a handful of strong female singers. Polynesian harmonies and lyrics, but a couple of hymns that I knew the english words to! So funny to hear, and a christmas treat! Of course the whole missionary thing was very destructive and, in my opinion, fundamentally wrong, but 500 years later you have to accept that this is the belief system of many Marquesans, and to criticise that would be to continue to think we know better than them, which or course we do not. Scientologists on the other hand...


Afterwards we bought some beers and drove to the north side of the island to Haianapa, a bay with good waves, where Marquesan families were spending their christmas day barbecuing, hanging out in the sea. We swam and chatted and walked around, and then came home. In the evening I rowed over to Romano's boat and we drank some rum and talked about rats and Marseilles and marriage and whether or not providing socio-economic relief (i.e. charity and ngo stuff) in a capitalist society is infact supporting that society. Concluded: Probably yes, but that doesn't mean it is not a good thing to do.

A good christmas.