Anaho & Music

Music

Island: Nuku Hiva

Lobsters in Lobster pot: 0

The late afternoon sun creates a dazzling white path on the water, past bobbing sail boats and into the hills, which stand mute grey-green, shadows beginning to lengthen.

It has been a big couple of weeks in the little microcosm that is my world at the moment. Since I last wrote we moved from Ua Huka, itself barely populated and stunningly beautiful, to the north side of Nuku Hiva and a bay called Anaho. Like many of the bays we have been to, this had a beige sandy beach that fronted a steep, verdant vally, mangoes and limes falling off trees everywhere, big rays swimming under the Kayak. But this place felt different. For a start, there were no cars, and the only access was by foot or horse (all the locals used horses) over the hill pass, or by boat (I had a brilliant afternoon where I walked to the village over the hill and found the only visible occupants of the village, a small, fat, laughing 10 year old and his friends, sat with an ipod and a big Bose speaker, playing soca-style drummy pop and gyrating his layers of tummy blubber. I joined them, dancing my most outrageous dance and, after almost dying of laughter, the kids joined in) It also has the only extensive coral reef in the Marquesas, and fish buzz around everywhere. Back in the day ('the day' being between 1200 and 1700 before european diseases killed around 80% of the population) this reef supported over 1000 people, providing the raw material (oyster shells) to make highly prized fishing hooks and trading them across the archipelago. Now the population is around thirty people. They live in houses raised off the ground, and (as previously discussed), don't really seem to need money very much what with hunting, fishing, foraging and gardening, but what money they do make is from producing copra, the raw material from coconuts that goes on to become coconut oil and beauty products. The air is heavy with the slick sweetness of coconut as it drys in the sun. 

We arrived in the bay in the afternoon afternoon, one of two boats in the bay, and the exceptional beauty of the place combined with my return to good health post-infection put me in a wonderful mood. Six weeks into tropical boat life and my body has got the memo – 30 degrees is now normal and not uncomfortable. The bottoms of my feet have thickened so I can walk barefoot, and the tops of my feet are brown enough to no longer warrant sunscreen. My stomach is tolerant with of rainwater and local stand pipes (amazingly, all the water we drink on the boat is harvested from the rain, and we have stored almost 1500 litres for the crossing), and perhaps best of all, my attitude to mosquitos has gone from 'long trousers, deet, annoyance, and constant vigilance' to 'dear mosquito: neither you nor your bites exist'. This new attitude was imparted to me by Heretou, a musician with a voice that should be heard the world over, on the second night in Anaho, as we ate freshly butchered goat with even fresher homemade limeade. I asked him if there were mosquitos here, and whether I should put a shirt on. “it depends on your thinking,” he replied “if you don't acknowledge the mosquitoes exist, they don't bite you. It is the same with ants. If you are still and calm, then leave you alone. If you try and wipe them off, they run all over you. It is instant feedback on your state of mind'. I had had a stressful encounter with ants earlier in the day, so this resonated, and I have been trying out this new relationship with insects ever since, and it really works! I get bitten, but not as much as before, but the bites don't seem it itch hardly at all! Perhaps because I am used to them, but it really improves things, especially when I am with locals and wearing repellent and getting stressed would mark me out as different and, let's face it, deeply uncool. 

Heretou and I played some really deep, communicative, funky music together in the two nights we were there, and he played me the music he is producing, which blends traditional and incandescently beautiful Tahitian and Marquesan songs (with as much as 9 part vocal harmony), with strong beats and electronic elements. Could have been shit, but was infact really good. I learnt his limeade recipe, and I was all ready to settle in, snorkel around the coral, set my lobster net, perhaps write some proper music together (he had logic pro and a good keyboard), maybe find a wife, plant some coconut trees and stay there forever, when suddenly we realised that our food shipment from Tahiti was arriving on the other side of the island the following day (4 days early), and at dawn we waved goodbye to this paradise for the provincial capital, Taoiai (tie-o-why-ee), where we are now (which is, incidently, the location of Herman Melville's Typee, a true story of being captured by a tribe with cannibalistic tendancies). 

I said goodbye to Heretou at midnight, the night before we left, in a big rush as he jumped off the dinghy between waves and I span the boat around to navigate the reef (which I almost grounded the dinghy on twice and was only saved by random big waves that washed me precariously back into the channel). I thought that was it, and was sad as I felt I could learn a lot from this man, but lo and behold, he shows up a few days later in the place we are now and tells me he is going to 'get a few musicians together' for us to have a session. 

Heretou is half french, half marquesan, beautiful, intelligent, light and inquisitive, and I have no doubt could do anything he wanted with his life. After travelling and spending time in Tahiti, he has chosen to build a house in Anaho, the afor mentioned paradise, and has settled down to 'learn the marquesan way of life'- finding his food, growing his food, cooking, understanding the belief and cultural systems of the people. He tells me his days have no routine but usually include a combination of 

• 
  spear-fishing
  
  


• 
  - drawing
  
  


• 
  - playing and writing music
  
  


• 
  - gardening
  
  


• 
  - cooking 
  
  


• 
  - reading & writing
  
  


• 
  - getting high with his friends
  
  

for money he produces copra, or does odd jobs as they come up, such as assisting some kiwi archaologists in the next valley, or being the voice of radio adverts in Tahiti. What a thought, to have each day dedicated to things that are enjoyable, and self-improving, and are based on creativity! We in the west have swapped this freedom for possessions and a promise of a better future, and I think if more people saw that another life is possible, more people would find their own way of reclaiming some of this freedom. I have done it in an extreme way, but for sure there are small things everyone can do to spend more time doing what they love in the here and now. Working part time and reducing consumption (and associated bills), for example. Heretou had told me he was going fishing the next day. When I asked him how it was, he said he didn't go, because he had food left over from the night before. Go figure. 

So anyway, the day before yesterday I got picked up from the dock by a couple of friendly but not chatty guys, as well as heretou, and we drove a little into the hills, stopping at an abandoned building with a river running next to it where everyone got out their pipes and smoked, as apparently the wife of our host didn't like it around the place. Then we drove up the side of the valley, )at times the gradient was so steep it would have been barely possible to walk up) listening to upbeat reggae, and finally arrived at this house that was rehearsal studio downstairs, living space upstairs, and 3600 degree incredible views. Some of the musicians – around 6 in all – were from the band takanini, probably the most famous band in the whole of French Polynesia in the last few years, and I recognised some of them from music videos and a documentary about the band that I had watched before coming. This, and the size of the bass amps, pointed to some Serious Music Making. 

But I made a mistake. With such little language in common, the small amount of communication we do have becomes more important. I had a choice to either play it cool in the way I observe african musicians I have played with in the past, where it is implicit that everyone knows everythign is awesome so doesn't have to say it, or be overenthusastic and english and overblab, which could be endearing or could be annoying. I went for the former, but I think a bit too much. I should have said 'wow, this is an incredible space. It must have been so hard to build such a beautiful, well equipped studio on this tiny, inaccessible island. And I acknowedge that you are all very well respected, rather famous musicians, and it is an honour to play with you' etc. Instead, we arrived, and I petted the dog, which everyone thought was a completely mad thing to do (I assume because they all have fleas. Everyone else kicked them away), and then just sort of pottered around waiting for the music to start. There was an issue with some missing cables and either this, or my rudeness, or something else, made for a really weird atmosphere for the first sort of 20 minutes. We would start to play and it would sound good and then suddenly everyone would just stop playing, and chat in Marquesan with nobody really acknowledging my presence. Then a couple more musicians arrived, with a bass and a big korg synth, and the groove was put on the top of a nail and nailed into the sonic vista, and we played. And we played. And suddenly everything was ok. Reggae, funk, dub, originals and occasionally covers, everyone able to play all the instruments with finesse, the guys swapping around mid song if they had an idea they wanted to try out on a different instrument. A male and female vocalist. A loop pedal used by a left-handed guitar player who played a right handed guitar upside down. Pre-rehearsed arrangements that included sudden breaks and harmonic diversions that kept me on my toes but also allowed me to show my adaptability and willingness to follow the music. Slowly the band leader, whose house it was, actually started acknowledging my existence, and by the end of the 5 hour session he was giving me melodies to play, and initiatin g some pretty sexy synth/clarinet call and response. 

There are, of course, lots of issues around loss of traditional culture and also cultural imperialism and the behemoth of western capitalist culture that they must have been exposed to through the music industry, and it felt like there was definitely a waryness of me that I hadn't experienced in the Marquesas until I came to this town. And I could of handled the situation with more composure. But as the music pitched and rolled around me in that studio on the side of the hill, and there was eye contact and smiles and the groove was so deep my body could not help but move, and the clarinet sounded sweet and on point, I realised that this is what I love doing more than anything else in the world (almost), and this is what I had intended to do in London, but (with the exception of Colin Samurai rehearsals where this happened all the time) got sidetracked by a million other related-but-not-quite-the-same things.

So I was happy, and then came back to the dock to find a big pot luck going on (fruit salad with a coconut and white chocolate sauce) and a jam, and (as has happened at least once before, always with negative outcomes), I tried to enter this jam at the same place I had ended the last one, which was inappropriate, and I got annoyed with myself for playing the right notes at the wrong time with the wrong intention.

And now the days are spent in preparation for the Big Sail to Kiribati. Tom wants the boat in perfect working order, so we have been attaching things to other things (wind veins to masts), taking things (rust and barnacles) off other things, restringing djembes, eating brie. I spent a lot of today sowing thick thread around the ends of ropes to stop them fraying. Now I will head to the internet to send this off and then jump in the (alarmingly warm) sea. 

Yesterday was dramatic, today is ok

Island: Ua Huka
Lobsters in lobster pot: 0

I have always liked the title of that Mum song (the band, not my mum), and finally I can use it in a blog. Except that yesterday was only dramatic in my own head, and (I assume) the rest of the world continues to destroy itself today as much as yesterday.




We have moved islands since I last wrote, and are now anchored in the bay of a village called Hane on an island called Ua Huka, population (of the whole island) 500. Mountain goat population: 3000. Wild horse population: unknown. Getting here involved our first overnight crossing, taking 2 hour shifts on the wheel. A fickle wind and the fact that two of us had never steered a ship before (I don't think Henry's canal boat in Dorset counts) provided challenge enough, but on top of that half way through the night the wind dropped completely, and when tom, the captain, went to turn the engine on, we discovered that the accelerator handle was broken. I am not sure if I was the one that broke it, but as I have been breaking things left, right and centre here (including, as regular readers will know, cracking a kayak) I knew there was a decent chance. The next morning, as I watched tom struggle to do the repairs, I felt like a complete loser. This, compounded by a lack of solitude after exactly a month on the boat and a fresh outbreak of my pus-laden infection, put me in a rather pathetic mood. So I put my last clean pair of socks on over my bandages and went for a big walk.



The scenery was stunning – scottish highlands meets jurassic park. Wild horses roamed about. I stopped at an arboretum where the island policeman, married to the lady at the arboretum, showed me round and gave me as many mangoes, starfruit and grapefruit as I could fit in my bag. Definitely the first and probably the last time that will ever happen. I stopped and ate my ham and mayonaise sandwich at the foot of a huge cross, high on a cliff overlooking the sea. And all the time I was struggling to appreciate the beauty of the situation I was in: I was aware of how amazing everything was, I just couldn't pull myself out of the funk, and the fundamental question in one of the books I am reading boiled to the surface of my mind (sacred path of the warrior): how much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life?”.

And another quote from someone I can't remember who said 'when you have nothing you come to know who you really are' or something along those lines. And I always thought that meant 'when you are penniless and your wife and all your friends have left you because you are an alcoholic' but actually I think it can also mean 'when all the things you define yourself by (e.g. job, band, friends, routine, collective memories) are no longer there to reinforce the person you assume you are'. But this line of thinking has a flip side – it means you can realign yourself and think about what sort of person you actually want to be and steer in that direction, without all the assumptions (and habitual behaviours) that come from the things and people around you.







And thinking about why I ALWAYS lose stuff and break stuff (as anyone who has spent anytime around me will know). And why I often cook too much food, eat it all really fast, and then am a bit sleepy (or like now, when I am eating a big block of chocolate without really tasting it because I am concentrating on this blog). And why I find meditation very hard to do. And especially at that moment because I was walking through this monumentally beautiful and unique landscape and brain-constipating myself on all these questions.

I realised that I AM VERY RARELY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. I am always in the past or future or wondering about this or that that has got nothing to do with the information coming from my senses. Does this sound like a big revelation to you? To me, at that time, it was pretty big. And I think of people that do seem more in the moment, and I realise it is those people that I really respect and admire, and I think of people who are anxious or carry big burdens around with them and realise that they too seem to rarely be in the present moment.








So currently goal number 1 is: be in the present moment. Practice: Good posture. Eating slowly. Really listening to what people are saying and the meaning of it. Lingering longer with my eyes ears and nose aware of my surroundings (easy here as everything is as if moulded for an elaborate eco-fantasy film). Russell brand says in his book 'revolution'* that the strongest common element in all religions/self help books/spritual systems is an urging to be in the present moment.

I'll let you know how it goes.

* Russell Brand has always struck me as a total knob, and I thought his move into anti-capitalism, pro-systemic social change would be brief and gauche, but actually listening to him read his audiobook (I am about half way through), I have to say that my views are extremely similar to his, and he discusses the ideas of interesting and diverse people, from david graeber to rumi. And it is, in part, very funny. He should probably relieve himself of the vast majority of his money to really be able to speak with any credibility, but perhaps my automatic distaste for him was another example of me not living in the present moment and making assumptions... some of his ideas include cancelling all personal debt, banning titles (e.g. sir, the honerable etc), and banning personal security. All of which are themselves quite revolutionary I think.

Location:Ua Huka

Tahuata

“What I like best in the whole world is Me and Piglet going to see You and you saying 'What about a little something?' and Me saying 'Well, I shouldn't mind a little something, should you, Piglet,' and it being a hummy sort of day outside, and birds singing.”

I am reading 'the Tao of Pooh' at the moment, having just finished 'Candide' by Voltaire, two perfectly appropriate books for these last days. 

We are anchored off a small island called Tahuata, in a bay known locally for the pods of dolphins that hang out here. They come each morning and evening, around 20 fins cycling around, occasionally flipping and spinning. I have been out to kayak amongst them, and hope to swim with them before we go. To convey the scene and mood of the bay stretches my descriptive powers to the limit, and I fear I will come across a bit boasty, but I think if I write it down it will seem more real. 

I must start with the colours of the sea. Jade with a sheen of turqoise, moving in patches to a heavy navy, the sun and gentle swell shifting patches of silver at 45 degrees. To the west, open ocean radiates patches of brilliant white where the sun comes through the clouds. Curving from north to east to south is the bay. At it's base, boiling white waves suddenly vicious on rocks. Above, a metre or so of bare black volanic rock, not going anywhere, then the green begins, everything arching out over the sea to catch as much sun as possible – hundreds of coconut palms, fat yellow coconuts visible from the boat. Trees and bushes, the passing clouds moving zeppelin shadows over them. The ridges and peaks maybe 300 metres high, tapering down to the north and south. The masts of the four other boats in the bay like matchsticks in front of a cooker. Our boat, on just one anchor, arcs slowly with the current, providing a constantly shifting panorama for those too lazy to move their own head from side to side. The same 30 degrees celcius it has been for the last 3 weeks, placated by a rising and falling breeze.going anywhere, then the green begins, everything arching out over the sea to catch as much sun as possible – hundreds of coconut palms, fat yellow coconuts visible from the boat. Trees, bushes, the passing clouds moving zeppelin shadows over them. The ridges and peaks maybe 300 metres high, tapering down to the north and south. The masts of the four other boats in the bay like matchsticks in front of a cooker. Our boat, on just one anchor, arcs slowly with the current, providing a constantly shifting panorama for those too lazy to move their own head from side to side. The same 30 degrees celcius it has been for the last 3 weeks, placated by a rising and falling breeze.

Time has flattened. I took my watch off a few days ago to see what it would be like. Strange at first but, for now at least, the days have seperated not into minutes and hours but into meals and sleep and the time in between each. I wake up at dawn with at best a vague idea of the programme for the day, and over crepes and homemade mango jam people state their intentions for the day and any work that needs doing. From this vague beginning the days seem to fill themselves -albeit at a leisurely pace- and before I know it I am settling down with a cup of tea to watch the sunset and play a little mbira. 

Yesterday was one such day. I had a single aim – to kayak 2 miles to the nearest village and go to the clinic to pick up some fresh bandages (the final symptom of the infection I have had the last few weeks is a big hole on the top of my right foot). All was going well until I tried to land the kayak on a particularly tricky jetty. The swell made the kayak rise and fall, but was never quite high enough to get a good grip on the slippery rocks. I tried playing it safe for a while but wasn't getting anywhere, so I took a deep breath and Went For It. The odds were against success, and sure enough I ended up in the water, the kayak was upside down and rocking about, and it took a good few minutes of dodging waves before I finally managed to haul myself and then the kayak onto land, heart beating fast. And oh no! Big crack in the kayak. Daylight visible through the hole. Shit. So I left the kayak on the dock, still noone else around (the village has maybe 100 people in it) and went to the clinic, which seemed to be the local transexual hangout (gender bending is an accepted part of the culture here), and got a fist full of bandages from the nurse there. Objective 1: complete. But what to do about the kayak? I decided the best course of action would be to hang around and chat to people for a while. After a strange conversation with some local youth trying to trade fruit for first whisky then cocaine (ignoring my repeated explanations that I had neither), surely enough I met the man who operated the local JCB, and he had some epoxy resin, so we went to look at the kayak and then he went home and came back with the resin, mixed it, and I slapped it all over the crack. He assured me it would dry in an hour or so, and (on his request) I bought him a big bottle of coke to say thanks, and then he went off an reappeared with a half dozen grapefruit as a gift for me. So there I sat, in the tiny bit of shade I could find, eating grapefruit and peanut butter and reading herman melville's typee, waiting for the resin to dry. 

I waited and waited and then the sun moved behind a cloud and it began to rain. Que lastima! The resin isn't going to dry now. Having missed the only boat back to my home bay, and not wanting go back without the kayak, I was in a bit of a pickle. So I decided to hang around a bit and see what occurred. 

After a while imspotted some kayaks heading towards me, and who should appear on a kayak but melanie, a french singer from the last island we were on, and the man whose boat she was staying on. Allah akbar! I asked them straight up if they could give me a ride home on their boat and they said yes. But first they had to fill their water, pick some fruit, then we all went back to their boat, me paddling fast but the epoxy holding ok even though it was wet still, where we ate meatballs and spaghetti and then they took me the couple of miles home. 

Now that we have moved to a bay that doesn't have loads of other boats dirtying the water, lots of water-based activities have got going. The hull has been cleaned, the coral admired, and people have dived into the sparkling sea from various parts of the boat and rigging. However, the chief activity is spear-fishing – swimming around with a snorkel and flippers and a big and mean looking speargun and shooting fish. Sounds simple but actually is both physically and mentally very demanding. Three people go out – two with spear guns, plus a support kayak to store any fish that are shot. Due to the hole in my foot, I have only been able to kayak so far, but it has been very good to watch Tom in action: he snorkels slowly, looking for an edible fish (some contain toxins from the coral and are inedible). When he sees one, he floats face down in the water for a second, then slowly, as if in slow motion, he dives vertically down to around 10 metres (but sometimes up to 25 metres!) where he waits poised (at 10 metres his weight is equal to the water so he neither rises or falls) before releasing the spear into the head of poor mr fish. If he is successful, he grabs the fish and holds it above his head as he ascends to the waiting kayak, before the sharks can steal it from him. The other diver uses her speargun to gently push away these sharks. Watching this and doing a bit of deepish snorkelling myself as I start to train to be a Badass Hunter, it becomes so clear that we, floppy, oxygen dependent humans, are in alien and hostile territory when underwater. Many dangers, no easy catches. a cr. 

So to mitigate our corporeal weakness, sometimes we need to use those big, dangerous brains of ours... I have been using mine to design and build a lobster net! Looks like this:

Built from plastic netting, string, cable ties and a tin can. I am immensely proud of it, but this pride is suspended until it actually CATCHES a lobster, which after 2 days in the water it hasn't yet. 

The few locals around also seem to spend a lot of time fishing and hunting. There are wild goats, pigs, chickens and horses on this island, and in preperation of any big party (especially weddings), groups will head up into the hills for a day or two and come back with enough meat for a feast. In these more remote valleys it is possible to be almost self-sufficient, and it seems that the only use locals have for money is to buy petrol and alcohol. Despite being a person who neither makes nor spends much money, this way of living I find so hard to imagine. But examples of it pop up here and there – last night a boat pulled up next to us, the three drunk and exuberent men inside offered to exchange meat and fruit for rum. We poured out half a bottle for them and they came back with a big tupperware of delicious meat with various fruits. We ate royally.

New Year, Food, Finding a Role

Well, new years afternoon here, just after midnight in england. Sitting thronelike on the roof of the boat as a shower blows through. I have just resecured the tarp that is covering the vents of our fruit dryer - a contraption that has the same shape and principles as a bamboo steamer, but is made of netting and hangs from one of the masts. Coconut, mango and papaya. A fine sight but am dubious about whether anything will actually dry in the fairly high humidity here.
Food and eating have been dominating discussion on the boat these last few days as our departure from Hiva Oa draws closer. We are putting an order in for 3 months worth of food (worst case scenario) to a lady in Tahiti. She will buy it and put it on a ship that will meet us in Nuku Hiva, the last island on the Marquesas before 1500 miles of open ocean to Kiribati, which apparently has no spare food, and then another 2000 to the Marshall Islands. What to take? A shopping list is proposed, discussed and generally agreed upon. Jan and Laura, the two newest crew members, are well keyed in to both nutrition and where food comes from and have a natural - and perfectly justified - aversion to highly processed, ethically dubious foods that I scoff down with little thought. Better to be around people on that side of things than the other, but I did make a robust (but ultimately doomed) argument for peanut butter. I didn't mention thatthe only kind you can get here is the american kind, which is basically palm oil and sugar, and has the same guilty addictiveness as smoking. Instant noodles made it onto the list though, as did processed cheese (the only kind of cheese for miles around it seems). And lots of the sauces and spices, based on the assumption that we are going to catch loads of fish. So good quality soy sauce for sashimi, and butter, cream and herbs for the french cooks.

But the other side of this is how we can preserve perishable food available on the island for the journey. Hence the fruit drying, and a trip by me round to all the other boats, my french level set to 'understandable yet highly flawed with accompanying naive grin', to ask for empty jars to make mango jam. Big success. Mushroom spores are being injected (endless oyster mushrooms in 6 weeks time), coconut dessicated, chillis and garlic set in olive oil. Lemons put in sand (no joke). Lots of work for relatively small quantities, but so interesting to learn.

The whole crew are here now, the last arriving yesterday. We are five and, though not famous, Enid herself would have stuggled to find a skill set more suited to an adolescent adventure book/tv series. Tom, the captain, picked up the boat 10 years ago in hong kong and can repair every part of it quickly, probably using material he found at the bottom of a coral reef or that he magics from a corner of the engine room. A captain at 24, lucky to be alive after a barracuda bit off half his forearm in cuba a few years ago, with the boat as much a part of his identity as 'unsung hero' is part of paul scholes'.

Emma, also french, quit her high flying job in paris after couchsurfing with tom whilst on a holiday to see her brother in tahiti, and has been here ever since. Amazing cook (lobster her speciality, which i am told we will be eating a lot of) and takes responsibility the logistical details - money, supplies (food and medicine) with the efficiency of someone who has made a profession of it.

Jan, czech, tall and strong, cares about plants - growing them, foraging them, eating them, saving them. He has dedicated most of his adult life to developing his skills and knowledge in different parts of the world, and when with you, will give you things to eat and smell and morsels of information about a world i rarely think about. Did you know, for example, that fruit still on a tree holds more water during the full moon (and vica versa)? So if a farmer wants to sell his fruit, he harvests on a full moon so the fruit are bigger, but if he wants to dry his fruit he picks it on a new moon. Cool. Each day Jan sets off with his backpack and returns a few hours later heavily laden with of coconuts, chillis, mangos, breadfruit, grapefruit (it helps that there is fruit dropping from trees all over the place). Likes to go to bed early. Great guy to have around.

Laura arrived the other day having just finished walking 3000 miles from the coast of australia to the middle. Realised she missed the sea, and so  here she is. Outdoors instructor by trade, her first aid skills are comfortably in the realm of 'medic'. Resourceful and grounded and reminds me a lot of Behla.

And then attached to this dream team like a advertising supplement to a newspaper is me, currently especially useless as i have a blood infection that manifests in particuarly ugly, pussy eruptions on my skin, and a swollen right foot, so i am hobbling about in an ungainly fashion and accidently leaving used bandages everywhere. This body was forged to stand up to the north sea and wind and doesn't know how to handle itself in the heat, sweat and insecty world of the tropics. So first it burnt and then it itched and now, seemingly, it has melted. But we are learning together, and I need to cut it a bit more slack.

But i digress. It has been a good process for me to initially think my skill set was useless out here: music is all well and good, but doesn't feed anyone, and there are no children on the boat to provide education to. Like a lot of people, i tend to value myself on what i can DO, and am seen to be doing: creating, producing, having something interesting to say, making money, being unique. But in comparison (comparisons, as someone once said, are odious, but here we are) to these dudes I possess merely an adequate amount of strength, wit, life experience, revolutionary zeal. Nothing to puff my chest out at. And on acknowledgement of this, the challeng is to learn to be ok with just being a person that is there, sharing time and space. And perhaps at the heart of it is the need to be respected, revered and perhaps even loved  by others - validation of your existence. When that is gone you find out if you respect and love yourself. It has also made me think about what i do have to give to this situation, and what attributes I have learnt in the past that are relevant here and, crucially, what I want to spend time developing. Skills, of course, but I am thinking more like patience, discipline, self-control, non-judgement, ability to react spontaneously with the correct intent.

One thing I can do very well though is sit around and eat home made pizza and  drink rum and play music and get to the heart of matters.   That was our new years eve, with romano and the gang, and it was great (I now write after new year).

We set sail in a few days, so not sure when next blog will be up. I think there is a way of subscribing if you want to get a nudge...

In the meantime, happy new year