NYC – romantic bender

I had booked my flight back to New York late enough that I could have most of Friday in Chicago, but early enough that I still had a chance at catching a show upon arrival. Sure enough, while my mother and I were out to lunch with a friend of hers the day before I left, I found out that her stepson’s band would be playing at Brooklyn Bowl the moment my plane landed. While he and I had never met, I’ve known other folks in his band for years, so it was about time I saw them. I had no checked bags and jumped in a cab as soon as possible after arriving at LaGuardia. I was at the club in no time and the ride was less than twenty dollars for a whole lot less hassle. There have been times of larger financial success in my life, but at thirty I am also sometimes willing to suck it up and quit being cheap. As I was crossing the street to the venue, I noticed two guys with horn cases on their backs (in Brooklyn, there’s a lot of us in the turtle club) so I stopped to see who they were. It turned out that these two were in the opening band and thus able to get me in and put my bags backstage. I caught more than half of JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound’s very long set, plus made a new trumpet playing friend. I felt rather clever that I had so easily found a place to stash my luggage. Afterward, I hung out with the guys in the band a bit, eventually having a late dinner there with the keyboardist and his Chicago friends, finally getting to know him after years of our families being friends. I even got included in a cab ride back to Manhattan, so my night was nothing but easy, which was a good thing since I had rehearsal the following afternoon for the first time in over a month.

New York welcomed me more warmly than I possibly expected, for better and for worse. I had thought all of the positive male attention in Alaska had been due to the skewed gender dynamics, but after a couple of fun days in the East Village / Lower East Side, I began to realize that it might just be the freshly single and happy vibe I had acquired. Add to that phenomenon a ten-day visit wedged between a month of absence on either end and it made for a debaucherous stay. Stability in the form of rehearsals and a few days of work at the venue was the only thing keeping me at all grounded as I celebrated being both single and happy with NYC for the first time in a long while. I had originally figured this time would be spent with the hobeaux. Instead, thanks to getting dumped, I had a fun time trying to forget him.

So, take the romantic interest which had already been expressed by many friends when I made known the breakup and add to that the sheer confidence of a woman who has been spurned by a boy who didn’t even deserve her. Indeed, the number of suitors was almost as dumbfounding as the common threads between them. I’m not trying to brag, I was more taken aback than anyone by all this attention. I was a bullied late bloomer and have always been a geek, so there’s always a lingering bit of insecurity no matter the present circumstances. There were certain trends, all fairly uncommon for me – actors, guitarists, ginger musicians, Latin men. One old habit I couldn’t seem to break was guys with my ex’s name… there were five of them! I don’t know what attracts them to me in such high numbers, but the person I’d been kind of dating until I met the ex had the same name as well. One at least simply has the same name in Spanish, plus I’ve known him for seven years, so he gets favoritism. All of this romantic chaos has reminded me why I had enjoyed being in a relationship – I had a lot more free time. I’m not so good with moderation, you see.

My week and a half wasn’t all madness and hedonism, believe it or not. The rehearsals with the band were very productive, as the new keys/accordion player had a lot of tunes to learn, and we all had to rehearse the three new songs. I also practiced twice with a group called Jazz Fakers, who play experimental improv music but more melodically than most. I played one on saxophone and the other on clarinet and got a lot of useful feedback from their sax player. I also worked several days at the new music venue and had a couple of fun business meetings at nearby restaurants with the owner. I began to get to know the handsome baristas across the street and the pretty bartenders on the corner, spending increasing amounts of time loitering at their establishments and feeling like part of a neighborhood for the first time in a long while.

Those were productive times during my visit, much of the rest was devoted to seeing friends and enjoying myself. In the middle of my visit, I had a full day of work followed by an absurd night. I met up with a violinist friend of mine and had fun being silly girls. We stopped into a music store in the East Village and just as I was explaining to the owner our conversation about sexy men, a guy walks in wearing nothing but pink underpants, a waist bag, boots, and a fur hat. We had to laugh at how appropriate it was. “Should I go out and put more clothes on?” he asked politely. We reassured him that he had simply illustrated a point and it was fine. Then I realized that I knew him from New Orleans. Not only that, he and his partner were living in the basement of the punk house where I sublet not so long ago. My friend was not surprised. On our way out, she and I got talking to the other guy who had been there shopping, and we had apparently crossed paths at Golden Fest. He taught us a beautiful a capella tune in a language we didn’t understand, and we all sang it for fun on the street. I enjoy New York because things like this happen, but it also bothers me that when they do, nobody pauses to appreciate them.

The rest of the night was lost to the problem of having too many friends who work in bars in the same neighborhood. First, I went to one where I knew the bartender, then another where a friend was producing a burlesque show, then finally one where my friend was DJing. There were also a number of folks working in other capacities who I knew, so the free drinks were far too abundant. I think I finally was ready to go on my post-breakup bender and I did it like nobody’s business. I punched someone in the face (much to the approval and amusement of his co-workers), forgot where I’d locked my bicycle, and somehow befriended two Australian tennis stars who rescued me from further bad ideas at the end of the night. I returned and thanked them repeatedly the next day after I left their place and found my bicycle. I knew the night could have turned out far worse and vowed to take better care of myself. I felt like a certain Ms. Charity Hope Valentine at the end of the movie version of Sweet Charity, as she wanders Central Park after her heart breaks and the world breathes life back into her spirit, “and she loved hopefully ever after.”

I tried to calm down the rest of my week a bit, taking it somewhat easier on myself the next night by simply attending a very interesting radical economics lecture in an NYU building. I went out for dinner after with a couple of the speakers and our mutual friends, honored to be included among them. A man and his son told me about how Abbie Hoffman had lived in their basement when he was in hiding, meanwhile the father published some of his books. Of course they knew the Living Theatre, they had helped send them to Europe. Meanwhile, I finally realized that a friend, who I already knew had published a significant Occupy book recently, had also been an originator of Billionaires for Bush. I made some new friends and resolved to do more serious writing. I ran into a friend in Washington Square Park and met her Croatian bike punk friend. She mentioned which band I was in and he immediately reacted and had her take his picture with me. Things are so odd. I stayed out a bit too late again hanging out with bartenders, but was far better behaved.

I left Union Square on Thursday with nothing but the clothes on my back, my sax, and my computer. I hit a festival on the waterfront briefly, saying hi to the Himalayas and Lady Circus, then left the island until Sunday. Those days continued to be full of rehearsals, drinks with friends, promising new developments, and lots of wandering around Brooklyn. I kept meaning to catch up on my blog and get some other writing done, but something shiny always distracted me. On one day, I saw two friends’ bands (including Raya) and both fed me their leftover band food, not a bad deal. I finally sat myself down to write over coffee at a boho little faux-francais cafe where a new friend was quietly playing trumpet in the corner with some guitarists. It was already almost midnight and I was finally getting some writing done. The next night after rehearsal I tried again to get some computer work done at a bar, but then the next thing I knew, the bartender was feeding me shots of Fernet and an older man from Chicago had lifted his head off the bar at the mention of Alaska and talked my ear off about the Chicago food industry for an hour. He insisted I ought to be a food promoter.

That night, I finally got to see Autodrone, my DJ friend’s gothy band, who was playing at the Knitting Factory. It was nearby and nearly time for it to start, so I would’ve been a jerk to miss it. A new saxophonist friend met up with me in the beer garden next door after the show, bringing along his guest from out of town who was also a sax player. At one point, I was ordering a beer and chatting up the bartender about different types and he remarked on how smart I was and that he was surprised I was hanging out in that neighborhood on a Saturday night. I explained that I play in a touring band, so it made sense. “Well, I’m a professional saxophone player” was his response. Only in New York, a bar full of us. My friends back on the patio pointed out that if he was really so professional, he wouldn’t be working a Saturday night shift behind a bar. Touche.

The next day, I rode through Central Park, remembering fondly the summer park days of my Chicago childhood, hitting the shady canyons of midtown on my way South. On this visit, I’ve been impressed with the city’s ever broadening bicycle infrastructure, although the lane which heads down Broadway becomes a bit of a scavenger hunt once you get to Time’s Square. By the time I arrived back in Union Square, I finally had to lock myself in my friend’s apartment to get anything done. The combination of being extremely friendly and wearing a form-fitting dress were making productivity pretty unattainable in public. I will also be the first to admit that it takes very little provocation to distract me from whatever I’m doing. I turned on my downtempo playlist and set to ignoring a beautiful Sunday afternoon and finishing my vacation post from weeks ago. I grounded myself, saying that once I finished the post, I could go get a meal. So, midnight dinner in alphabet city with a friend it was.

On my last few days in town I put my foot down – no more bar crawls, distant beds, or crazy nights. I actually spent much of the day before my flight sleeping, getting in a few hours of work at the venue before evening. I had another rehearsal at the same space immediately after, stopped to visit at the corner bar, had desert wine and dried grasshoppers at a friend’s apartment, and then shared a bowl of food from Punjabi with another as he walked me home. I had to pack the next day, after all. Somehow, I got everything in order for my afternoon flight in time to catch public transit out to the airport.

Revolution According to Fictional Singing French Whores and Batman

My time back in Chicago involved quite an eclectic bit of nerdy radically themed fiction. Here is an explanation of revolution via musicals about French Revolution prostitutes and the newest Batman film.

Surely time and personnel have altered the play since I first saw Marat/Sade, but what I recall most is the complicated nature of mental health institutions at the turn of the nineteenth century. It’s a bizarre play wherein the Marquis du Sade directs a musical using his fellow inmates at an insane asylum, slowly acting out the circumstances leading to the death of Jean Paul Marat. The biggest message in the play for me now, however, is the question of who actually benefits from a revolution. Clearly, the play points out, it is the lowest classes who will lose no matter what. The lessons still to learn from Occupy rang in my ears throughout, especially the class structure norms from which the movement refuses to break away. (See previous gripes about similarities to Animal Farm at Occupy.) In their battle against the “one percent” many occupiers seem to ignore the other numbers at play – the relatively middle tier who are eager and able to rebel, the lowest tier whose different backgrounds and lifestyles often distance them from Occupy-style activism, and the generally upper tier who will inevitably come out on top regardless.

That said, the most repeated question in Marat/Sade is:

“What’s the point of a revolution without general copulation?”

Post sexual revolution, the Puritanical nature of this country still gets in our way at every turn. Many freedoms were won, the history books then neatly packaged it into a finished era, and now sex as an issue has fallen slightly out of fashion in mainstream activism. Debates over issues surrounding marriage/reproduction/alternative lifestyles abound, but pure carnal nature is a  bygone topic to many people, a settled matter of our hippy free love past. Looking back at the era in which the play is based, nobody would have known better the importance of general copulation than Pauline Bonapart, Napoleon’s nymphomaniacal sister. Her history is an interesting read, not to mention an unusual one for that era. Recently, with the early 1800s and France on my mind, I finally took the plunge and watched the 25th anniversary DVD of Les Miserables. Somehow I have made it to thirty, in a life filled with musical theatre, without seeing this show. Historically, and certainly radically, it did not give me much more to chew on. I won’t even get started on the fact that the two strong, independent women in the show die needless deaths, while the dippy ingenue is tossed around stage from man to man like a useless sack of lily-white flower; sure she’s pretty, but also pretty dull as a character. What I did take from watching this musical, though, was a reminder of a sentiment among writers that the revolutions in France did not change their day-to-day worlds as much as they’d hoped.

In my opinion, The Dark Night Rises has a lot to say on this matter as well. While many argue that there is no political message in this or any Batman film, especially in regards to Occupy, I took it as a cautionary tale about blind optimism for visionary change – a warning ranging from alternative energy to revolution. I see the story as pro-warrior (the police as humans) but inherently anti-war (skepticism of the system and its inevitable corruption). Much like Superman:Red Son‘s (DC’s Elseworlds what-if where baby Superman’s spaceship lands twelve hours later in Soviet Russia) surprisingly evenhanded treatment of Communism, Dark Night Rises depicts how easily absolute power corrupts absolutely. It also shows how charismatic leaders with false promises can take advantage of both the downtrodden insurgents and the optimistic elite. Such is the inevitable danger of revolution… or any change at all, really. In addition, as the innkeepers in Les Mis point out at the very end, when the barricades are down, the thieves and con artists will still be right where you left them. None of this is meant to discourage revolution outright, simply guard against the inherent dangers which go along with optimism and rebellion.

Several days after seeing Marat/Sade, I finally got the outside insight I was looking for. I joined my old band Environmental Encroachment in a rally to raise the minimum wage in Chicago. Three groups fed into the march which the band helped lead, each with a broad representation of Chicago workers. There were folks there from numerous interest groups of all ages/races/classes (even the IWW kids) and although it was sheltered under the umbrella of the Occupy movement, it felt much more diverse and somehow real than the Occupy events I’d attended in NYC. It also made me realize the inherent difference between a revolution and Occupy. There is clearly something more patient going on, less reactionary, hopefully more lasting. Sadly, despite their varied successes, many political revolutions have resulted in little long-term improvement for the working class – but can a financial revolution go where others have not… can Occupy do better?

PS – on a purely self-indulgent note – somehow in the midst of all of this, just in time to head to the gold mining lands of my historical obsession with Cascadian/Alaskan Victorian era vice, my made-up fashion genre of Frontier Punk has been evolving with my present preoccupations into something I’m calling Barricade Punk.

in and out of NYC on two very different buses

I had a relatively easy commute to begin tour, walking only a few blocks before spending the rest of the day being driven around. Somehow I had never seen my friends’ new house, but it was just what I expected. In the back yard there were, of course, chickens and they had their own swank little ramshackle house and an outdoor disco ball. We piled into a car and made the slow trip to meet the Bread and Puppet bus. We had two people to pick up on our way to New Jersey, the last of whom lives right next to the bridge. Two of us wound up ditching the car in gridlock tunnel traffic and heading on foot to collect our bandmate and his crates of food. This man is a dumpster diving champion. We filled every inch of the vehicle which wasn’t already full of humans or instruments with bags of veggies, cartons of hard-boiled eggs, and cartons of gourmet yoghurt.

We finally met up with the bus at a gas station and doubled our numbers. We were still at half capacity for the group that would be joining us in DC the next day. The bus ride was long but lovely and we spent most of it chatting and binge eating the bounty that we’d brought from the curbs of New York. It took us nearly twice as long as it should have taken a car to get to DC. I managed to navigate us out of some immobile traffic, but the bus tops out at 60mph anyway. We all arrived at our hotel downtown and collapsed into beds.

The next day we were up relatively early for a rehearsal and run through at the Kennedy Center. I was glad we got to have it there, since the actual event – while presented by them – was located across town near our hotel. We got a nice sightseeing tour on our way there and back, as well as a chance to explore the building a little bit. While it was nice to be rehearsing outdoors in their courtyard, it was brutal between the sun and the concrete. The band came together pretty nicely and the circus formed itself around the available cast. The bus served as a sort of green room where we could get shade and snacks and the water fountains at the Kennedy Center saw all manner of hippy water bottles. Towards the end, a friend of the group brought everyone a fantastic dinner and we ate outside while a fancy tuba player who was clearly there to play a gig watched on with confusion.

At the last minute we had wound up with an invitation to crash a wedding party at a lakeside campsite that night. We were worn out from the day but eager to play some music and see some stars. I spent the ride to the woods snuggling into the pile of pillows and duvets alongside papier mache sheep, life-sized Reagan, and a giant finger-pointing hand. I could hear someone playing a flute in the front of the bus, drifting across everyone’s conversation. Just when I thought the bus couldn’t be any more wonderful, seemingly everyone lifted their voices into multiple harmonies as they gathered around the Sacred Harp book. I was beyond blissful.

We arrived in the woods as little surprise, considering we were a massive green bus, but sent the sheep puppets out ahead of us anyway. Fortunately, the couple was back at the boat house, so we were able to take them and several others by surprise. The band marched in playing and continued on until we played almost every song in the show, as well as some others we happened to know. It was a much-needed rehearsal as well as a dance party. We had some beers and headed out at a reasonable hour to get some sleep before the big show. There wasn’t quite enough room to sleep in the hotel, so I immediately volunteered to sleep in the bus. It was so much better than a hotel room. I hoped it would rain and patter the roof, but alas it didn’t.

The next morning we were out bright and early to set up in Yard Park, a newly constructed park in a gentrifying industrial area along the river. Some of us ran to get coffee for everyone, while the puppeteers set their props and costumes in place. Helping assemble the stage with the bus as a framework was really interesting. It was not just an honor to be performing there with Bread and Puppet, it was inspiring as well. Once we had set up, we had time to explore the other acts, which were numerous as it was a festival of street performance. It was a long day, but our band parades, the big long puppet show, and the cantastoria roaming part were spaced out nicely. I was particularly thrilled at how receptive the crowds were to the radical content of not only the puppet show but the smaller acts and band songs as well.

As we were setting up, the very first person I saw other than ourselves was a clown/accordion player I know from Baltimore. I’ve almost stopped being surprised by these kinds of things. Soon enough, I’d run into a variety of stilt walkers and puppeteers I knew, who were all there through Nana Projects. I even finally met a woman I’d been in touch with over email about a venue there. As if the world wasn’t small enough, during our run through that morning, we were drowned out by a large soundsystem across the field. The whole cast paused the show and had a dance party, for what else could be done, but finally we had to live with it. Sure enough, when I walked past there later, the side of the rig said Redmoon. Sigh. At least it was only Midnight Circus using their rig, but the Chicago connection was still there. The festival booked an impressive variety of acts, not just that day, but over the course of two weeks.

My original plan had been to take an absurd roadtrip that night with a Baltimore friend and find ourselves asleep in his car at the start of the steampunk city in Waltham. My anarcho/anachro friend was tabling there and had offered me an extra exhibitors pass if I could get myself there. I was all set to go ahead with the foolish eight-hour drive when I got a text from my brass friend in Baltimore about a potential gig. Take the gig, my steampunk friend insisted. It turned out that the lady who needed someone the next day was also performing in Yard Park, so I quickly found her and made arrangements for the next day. It wasn’t long before I found a ride to Baltimore from DC with a burlesque troupe guy and a puppeteer lady who I’ve met at various shows. It was funny to be kidnapped from my radical grassroots puppet bus by the slick and funky Baltimore circus kids. I still wouldn’t trade the trip and shows with Bread and Puppet for anything else, though. I got dropped off at my friend’s old roommate’s house and we had cocktails and pizza and watched an animated fairy tale. It was a perfect end to a very big day.

Did I mention I was getting paid to dress up like a shrubbery the next day? At a fairy festival? It was awesome. The act is called Ambush Theater and we basically crouch down and hide everything non-shrub in order to blend in, then startle folks and generally run amok. Simple but brilliant. My friend and I got picked up by the lady and we drove out to the Maryland Fairy Festival pretty early in the morning. The routine was pretty good – dress up, run around, pretend to be a bush, get chased by kids, have animals try to eat you, watch guys in kilts threaten to pee on you, avoid pruning, scare some damsels, get hit on somehow, and then take breaks and enjoy the faire.

It was pretty stunning to interact with the kids there, and there were a lot of them. It’s been a while since I’ve done this kind of performance work and I’d forgotten how violent and sweet they can be. One of the little boys had a small parachute and was intent on killing the bushes. When you’re interacting with kids, especially ones you don’t know, you have to be extremely careful. If you’re in a costume and silent, it can be even more brutal, so you have to get creative. I finally realized that rolling over on my back and sticking my arms and legs in the air like a dead bug was all it took to satisfy the bloodthirsty ones. In their play world, they had clearly won, so I was off the hook and they could move on to other targets. Some of the little girls were incredibly kind, however. A few were intent on playing simple games with us and one even said to me “You’re a wonderful shrub, but you’re more than that too. You’re as pretty as a rosebud.” One of the adults, who was dressed as a hunter, had come to my rescue when I was being trounced earlier, but a gang of tiny girls were convinced he was up to no good and kept trying to get me away from him, pointing out that he had a gun and was therefore not to be trusted. Children who grown up at festivals sometimes have an awareness that is stunning.

It was one of the more perfect weekends I’ve had in a while, and this year has been full of some pretty good ones, both conventional and mid-week. Almost everything about it was a little bit circus with a dose of experimental music and I felt my old self stirring back to life somewhere deep inside. I marveled at how beautiful and charming all of my friends in Baltimore are; I think I have a crush on the whole city in a way. I enjoyed getting to spend time relaxing at my friends’ gingerbread house on the edge of town, even spending an afternoon practicing my sax while scaring the cats.

I decided to spend one more day in Baltimore, since it was being so good to me, plus anything I needed to get done I could do there. I’d made friends with a new member of Barrage Band on the last visit and he took me to a circus skillshare at Red Emma’s big church performance space. I knew this kind of thing must exist, and there it was. I taught him how to hula hoop and we had a fun play session, followed by the necessary visit to the bookstore for coffee. We drove around with blaring car speakers full of brass and realized our musical goals were pretty similar. Yes, we talked marching band to each other. That night, I hung out with an old friend from college at the Riot Folk house, which is beautiful and huge and reminded me why I want to live in a place like that, and sat around the kitchen table talking until far too late. In the morning, my new friend picked me up and showed me the last piece of the puzzle, a coffee shop fitting my mind’s picture of what every town should have. Satisfied, I boarded the Chinatown bus in some far flung part of town.

Hanging out with so many sax players that weekend and playing so much got me thinking. The past couple of months have been unusual for me because I have spent so much of it in NYC, with little of my time taken up by my main band. I haven’t played this much music with so many different people since my days before I joined it. Happily, I’ve realized that my playing has come a lot further than I’d realized. When you do the same stuff over and over for a year or two, it’s hard to notice improvement. The changes in tone and dexterity almost make me want to get a hold of a tenor and give it a whirl.

On the bus ride back, I finally finished up the ambitious mailing list job I’ve been hacking away at for weeks. Early on, I realized it was better to charge him a flat rate than by the hour, as I am far more productive and focused on what’s in front of me when doing multiple tasks at the same time. I tried to do only the mailing list while on the bus and my mind kept drifting to other important matters, such as the startling realization that I know the civilian names for all the core members of the X-Men. I’m not sure if I’m proud or embarrassed. I wound up getting a bit of work helping build something with him the moment I stepped off the bus. Then, it was rush to the Living Theatre, get interviewed for Occupy Museums, rush to a band sectional in Brooklyn, sleep, pack, get designs buzzed into the sides of my head in Crown Heights, go to band practice, and ready myself for the big NYC show.

Occupied with May Day

While I was as sad to leave a fun tour as I was to stay so briefly in Asheville, I was eager to get back to NYC for the May Day festivities. The influence of the Occupy movement had generated a vast itinerary which was not to be missed. I hesitate to say this, but it was far more Burning Man than any other day of action I’ve ever experienced. In fact, I heard there was some input from the event’s organizers into NYC’s May Day. While clearly none of these are inherent to Burning Man, the activities in various locations, marching bands, free classes and workshops, flash mobs, crafting booths, gifting, group bike rides, free food, costumes – they all reminded me of the general playa vibe… and there was even an art car. Maybe if folks on the West Coast didn’t spend so much time/money/energy on an ambitious party every year… well, I’m not going to get into that rant right now.

Although I knew there was a big day ahead of me, I hoped that the long sleep on the bus and restful day I’d had would carry me through a long night before May Day. I was determined to make it to the all night dance circle in Liberty Plaza, which began about 9pm the night before it all started. Several SLC graduates turned out, as well as a cluster of punks, to basically cleanse the space and our minds through contact improv until the sun came up. Back in college, there would be a circle of flower petals, but we decided to respect the sanitation worker who was refraining from spraying us down and held the flowers in our hands instead. We danced for a while to the ambient sounds of the street washer. At one point, some tough guys came by and engaged us in a little dance off, finally losing to the random older gentleman who had joined us early on. A couple of Occupy punks wandered by and told us we were the coolest; joy! At one point, a news crew used us as a backdrop for their nightly rant. I can only imagine the commentary. Eventually, I headed off on my bicycle and ran into a friend from RMO doing some dumpster diving. I was headed to catch a friend’s show nearby, but had my phone on vibrate for when I was needed back at the circle.

I managed to just miss the Prehistoric Horse set at the Delancey, but I did catch this awesome French duo called Nuage Magique who played avant-garde sousaphone and drum music. I figured they must know some French fanfare bands. Not only was I right, but they were playing instruments borrowed from two of my friends and the shows were set up for them by another friend from the brass band scene. Typical. I wound up staying at the show longer than expected, but made the necessary pep talk call to the lady leading the all night dance. She told me to go take a nap and come back in a few hours. When I woke up at my friend’s place in Union Square, it had already begun to rain and she decided it was close enough to morning to call it a night. It was only a couple more hours before I was awake again, though, trying to drag myself off the couch and get to Bryant Park for the start of the day.

Well, that didn’t happen, but I did meet up with Bike Bloc in Union Square and got a little riding in before racing back down to Liberty Plaza for Ballet at the Barricades. Special for May Day, the barre routines would be at the bull statue. I was a little late and waited around, riding back and forth between the two spots, but to no avail. The organizer’s phone was off and apparently they showed up just after I left. A lot of effort for naught, but the day only got better from that point on.

I must have ridden through almost every park between Wall St and Times Square that day. It was interesting to see the spaces evolve as the crowds grew. After I left the bull, I took a peaceful walk with my bike through Washington Square, rode past Union, picked up my clarinet, and headed for Bryant Park. I ran into Bike Bloc on the way and rode with them past Union Square, then checked out Madison Square Park, where a free university had been set up with a variety of open air classes, a table of incredible donated food, and thorough course listing packets. I visited Union one more time for good measure, then biked up to Bryant to see the big meetup. It was pretty impressive. On one end of the park, a wide range of people milled about chatting and sharing pamphlets and freshly silkscreened patches, while at the other the guitarmy readied themselves for battle. I dislike acoustic guitars in the hands of fools as much as the next person, but at least they were playing simple chord changes for a good cause that day! Somehow, so far I had seen surprisingly few familiar faces that day. It turned out that most of my friends were in Bryant Park. Soon enough, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra came marching past and entertained us with a song. Well, half of the RMO. They were so in demand that day and out in such high numbers that the band was able to split into two sizeable marching bands and play gigs constantly in various parts of Manhattan. I ran into the kid I had brought to the Occupy Museums meeting and he gave me a fantastic bandana which his friend had silkscreened, both artistically beautiful and usefully covered in legal advice. I found it funny that the city had put barricades up everywhere that day, yet the lawn at the park was being protected with a simple length of rope which all of the folks at the rally respected by keeping off the grass. I finally found the Ballet on the Barricades folks and we tried to do an action there, but by the time I had found several costumed friends, I’d lost them in a crowd. It was a day for brief reunions and easy separations.

Suddenly, but pretty much on time, the march towards Union Square began lining up. I was thrilled to have my bicycle, which entitled me to roam freely on the street instead of crowd onto the sidewalk. I made a new friend who was riding a cargo bike as I skirted the edge of the march. He and I decided to book it to the front and then race to meet the other feeder march before it arrived at Union Square. We paused at a corner so I could take a photo and were soon boxed into the curb by the line of police mopeds. We eventually convinced a couple of them to let us cut back onto the street, since we were in fact vehicles. As we were making out exit, a chunk of people at the intersection behind us suddenly made a collective push and consumed the width of 5th Ave. All manner of police rushed suddenly upstream against the endless tide, but soon relented to the masses. Sometimes a lack of hesitation is the most powerful weapon. The crowd moved wholeheartedly and there was no turning back.

I lost the other bike at the next intersection, but continued on ahead of the crowd until we reached Madison Square Park. Groups of people came running out to join the march as it continued on to Union Square. I in turn hurried down 5th towards Washington Square Park, where I managed to catch up with Bike Bloc. They had met the feeder march from over the Williamsburg Bridge and joined in the unpermitted protest down near the Lower East Side. By the time I found them in the West Village, it had turned into an absurd and almost amusing cat and mouse game between the cops and the protesters. Everyone would clump together in an orderly fashion as instructed, then split in opposite directions along 6th Ave. The bicyclists had their own assigned crew of moped cops who were failing to see the whimsy in this bit of theatre, trailing them in circles which always spiraled back to 6th. I hung back at one point and lost them all, so I headed back up to Union Square, eventually finding the bikers, the brass bands, and a wide smattering of folks I know. I didn’t spend much time near the stage in the front of the park, instead meeting up with people at the North end. Wisely, I sought refuge for a few at a friend’s nearby apartment, which had much-needed shade, water, couch, and toilet.

When a friend and I arrived back at the park, we found the Rude Mechanical Orchestra immediately and joined in the dance party. The two halves of the band had reconvened and they sounded fantastic. Three sousaphones is almost always a sign of something good. I found the folks from Bread and Puppet and was easily coerced into playing with the Tiny Band. I was determined to make one entire circle around the park before the march took off, during which I found the French guys from the night before. I jammed with them a bit on my clarinet, then insisted that they join us for the parade. I found the guy with the cargo bike again and he agreed to carry my folding bike and the rest of the French band’s drum kit along the parade route with us. It worked out beautifully.

I’ve heard that the final march had about 50,000 people in it (so imagine if everyone at Burning Man had one giant protest on the streets of NYC). The sidewalks had been pretty thoroughly barricaded for the occasion and I saw no skirmishes with the police. Our group wound up being the last part of the march, with Bread and Puppet’s massive boat and a variety of large puppets. We were visited by a variety of friends along the route, which stretched through streets both narrow and wide. It was a very long walk. I was thrilled to be playing music along side such talented players and friends. It was also an honor to be marching right behind Peter Schumann, the founder of Bread and Puppet. I always try not to be star struck when I see him, but it’s strange to be suddenly peers with someone you read about in books for so many years. He was dressed as Santa and at one point a group of clowns dressed as police came and arrested him with balloon handcuffs and sprayed the jeering crowd with silly string pepper spray.

The pickup band managed to find enough tunes to play to last the miles of marching. We’d all been in some band or another together at some point, so there were many common songs to choose from. There were members of brass ensembles such as Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Hungry March Band, Raya Brass Band, Veveritse, Stagger Back, The Tiptons, and Brass Menazeri. At one point, the band suddenly sounded so much fuller and I turned around to see that a large contingent of RMO had joined us. As the march drew closer to Liberty Plaza, the band grew smaller. It became quite reed heavy and a lot more intense and jazz-ridden. It was a ton of fun trying to keep up on the clarinet, especially when it veered towards free jazz.

I was pretty impressed at everyone’s stamina. We were parading for about three hours, but our part of the march was pretty much smiles all the way. I’m sure there were factions of the route which were far more intense and angry, but the music and puppets lightened everyone’s moods at the end of the parade. I heard that everyone continued on to the waterfront, where they then milled about the park for a while. Most of the band was done by the time it bottlenecked at Liberty, especially since most of us had a show in DUMBO to play or at least attend.

I was certainly glad my folding bike had made the journey with us. My new friend and I returned the drums to the French musicians and then hurried over the bridge to DUMBO. Riding across the clattering wooden planks of the Brooklyn Bridge after a day of protest felt pretty awesome. We made it to the Great Small Works Spaghetti Dinner only slightly late. I caught most of my friend’s two act musical about a historic union strike and ate some delicious hot food. The bathroom was also a highlight of our arrival there. I got talked into playing clarinet in the dance and mask piece, which was accompanied by a conducted improv band full of everyone who had been playing all day. It was beautiful and worked exceptionally well.

At some point, I noticed that my wrists were gently trembling from all the excitement and exertion of the day. I’m pretty sure my arms have never spent that many hours in one day gripping my handlebars and wrestling with my clarinet. Somehow, towards the end of the show, my body found a magical second wind, storing up the toll of the day for when I finally got horizontal. By the end of the Stagger Back Brass Band set, the room had turned into a dance party – as well it should. They rarely ever play anymore, so it was a real treat. A friend grabbed me and pulled me onto the floor and somehow I found the strength to waltz. The evening ended with a massive sing along to a raging version of “Which Side Are You On?”

I walked my bike back up the Manhattan Bridge while sharing stories of the day with the hobeau, who had spent May Day in Nashville. It was hard not to rub in how exceedingly awesome the day was in NYC, but I assured him it was important for him to be there, since without him there would’ve been no marching band in Nashville. I coasted down the other side of the bridge and headed for KGB Bar to meet up with the puppeteer friend from Charlottesville who I had neglected to visit on tour. Sure enough, sitting with one of the other puppeteers was the friend who drove me back from Chicago after New Year’s. Small world. We threw a joyous fit about it and delighted in a surprise chance to hang out. Eventually, we all got late night food from Punjabi and my head finally hit the pillow at my friend’s empty place in Chelsea sometime around 4am.

The next day I was more exhausted than I’d expected. The risk of getting arrested for no good reason is always enough to get your blood pumping, plus the lack of sleep topped with miles of biking and marching wore me out physically. For a general strike, I certainly worked myself pretty hard. The day after was thus spent mostly laying down. I got a decent amount of computer work done, but little else. By the second day, I still hadn’t stepped outside of the apartment. Society could have collapsed all around the building in the wake of May Day and I wouldn’t have known but for outside communication. Besides, if the potential for a better world wasn’t still being joyously celebrated on the doorstep, did I really want to go outside quite yet? With my body a bit recovered, though, I managed to have one of the better practice sessions I’ve ever had with my saxophone. Somehow the hours of wailing on a clarinet with top-notch professional reed players left me with the ability to flutter tongue. So THAT’s what it takes to learn how to do that! Besides that freak perk, my fingers moved faster and my mouth behaved better – all very much to my delight. If I could do all of my practicing at protests, that would be terrific. The brass band march also left me with a renewed joy of playing my instrument, which was something I’d been needing for quite some time.

Preoccupied with May Day…

…and a variety of other matters today, so my post isn’t ready.

In the meantime, here’s a quote from Bertolt Brecht which pretty much sums up my May Day:

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality,

but a hammer with which to shape it.”

another stow-away tour

There will be a post soon about May Day, but in the meantime here’s some travel stories from the previous week. Yesterday was wonderful but exhausting, so today is a day for writing and resting.

Staying in one place for too long starts to get to me. It was about a week (during which I thankfully had a lot going on in NYC) before I decided to yet again join my hobeau on his tour.  Similar to the last time, I’d found myself a gig sitting in with a large band, but mostly I was eager to get out of town and spend some time with both the fella and the open road. Somehow in the cruel irony of joining a professional touring band, I’ve been traveling less than usual. Regarding the difference between sleeping on someone’s floor after playing a DIY show or sleeping in a hotel after playing a big show, my basic nature remains unchanged and hopefully will continue to do so as long as my body will put up with it. I look back at these bright little pictures from a week on the road and my heart glows with memories of years of vagabonding in bands, playing silly shows in the middle of nowhere for little more than the love of this life we’ve chosen.

After the Inferno van got back to Brooklyn, I stopped into a bar to get change for the bus and was immediately asked about the sax on my back. Faced with the chance of playing a few tunes for drinks, I somehow chose the responsible option and headed to bed. It wasn’t long before I was up and packed for a trip of undetermined length. I met up at the cafe with a couple of kids who were on their way to Philly and we had a pretty easy drive there. I was hoping to startle the hobeau and his touring partner awake, but they were already stirring when we let ourselves into the punk house where I had found them shelter a couple of nights before. Slowly we got ourselves packed and out of the house and headed to Satellite Cafe for vegan bike shop wraps and coffee. All was well until the car key refused to come out of the ignition.

The next four hours became an increasingly intense ordeal. Without the key, there was no locking the car or opening the trunk, which was where his touring partner’s cello was safely locked – too safely, it turned out. Eventually, the car’s owner struggled with his burden while we looked for solutions on the internet and I brought him treats from the cafe. A friend even visited on his motorcycle but found no solution. I borrowed a wrench and vice grips from the bike shop, but even those didn’t work. I called mechanics, locksmiths, car dealers, the works. I almost even bought him a AAA membership so that we could get free roadside assistance. We were all committed to spending as little money as possible on this. Finally, ten minutes before the hardware store was about to close, he came running into the cafe jumping and smiling. He had employed the oldest solution in the book – hit it with a hammer. The key pushed straight in, started the car, and came out in one piece. I wanted to call everyone I’d asked for advice that day and tell them about this thing called a hammer. As soon as my initial joy wore off, though, I snatched the key out of his hand and ran upstairs to the bike shop. I’m not even sure what I said, but somehow they let this crazy lady leave her ID so she could “test ride” a bike and I was at the locksmith in the nick of time. Of all of the people I’d called, the guy there had been the nicest. He assured me that their locksmith was a wizard with broken keys and indeed he was. They said that one more turn and that key would have broken off in the ignition, so I copied it just in time. All of our problems solved for a few dollars! I let them keep the change on a ten. I also returned the bike and tools with a six pack of tall boys and candy for the non-drinkers. We thanked Satellite for all their support as well. We had gotten off easy for sure.

Our trio had lost the afternoon, but we made it to New Brunswick just in time for their show. Even I was amazed at the timing of it all. They played with Prehistoric Horse at an experimental music fest in a gallery, followed by a pretty good trip-hop band and some other acts. A few of the guys there recognized me from shows at the new music space in Chelsea, wondering who was helping with the door since both of the girls who do it were there in New Jersey. It made me feel useful and important, which is always a good thing on the road. I hit the wine and cheese table pretty hard, feeling that the stress of the day entitled me to drink and ignore my mild lactose intolerance. The cellist’s boyfriend had driven out to the show, so we traveled separately from them to her parents’ house outside of Baltimore. The morning came far too soon.

I was the first one up, but soon coffee and the fluffiest pancakes lured the others out onto the patio. The afternoon show in Baltimore wound up being mostly my gig. They were both supposed to play sets at it, so I had arranged for myself to sit in with Barrage Band. In the end, the cellist wasn’t booked and the hobeau played trumpet with the brass band, but in the end got to do his violin solo act. It was a pretty wonderful event and a classic example of why I like Baltimore so much. The rain had moved the Free Farm benefit inside, but they still had a row of tents out front for the chili cook-off and microbrew competition, as well as info tables and a stage within the warehouse. I ran into almost everyone I know in that city and made several new friends. I even connected their new saxophone player with my friend’s busking band, who need a horn player exactly when I’m already going to be on tour. The set was a lot of fun and it felt good to play with a big marching band again. His solo set went over pretty well too, although several of my friends couldn’t stick around long enough to see it.

We had to hurry out of Baltimore just as the event was finishing. The drive to DC was pretty awful, what with road closures and the complexly flawed little car struggling with the rain and hills. We made it to the venue just in time for his set, though. Again, it was a strange gallery space with an experimental music show. While it was tempting to stay in Baltimore and see my friends, I wasn’t about to miss the saxophone player from Zs, who was also playing a set that night. We geeked out over our old saxes after the show. The two cars reconvened at the cellist’s parents house again and we ate the cheese from New Brunswick as well as anything else we could find in the kitchen. We slept well into the afternoon, made breakfast, puttered about the house, and continued deeper into the South.

I had never heard of Staunton, Virginia, let alone been to it. We knew very little about the show they were playing, except that the guy was about to get married and had never thrown a house show before. In spite of all potential misgivings, it was pretty splendid. The most beautiful thing about house shows is that they attract the kids who might not otherwise get out to legit concerts. Everyone there was psyched to have musicians from New York and ponied up to the host’s donation hat impressively well. The night ended with a jam session in their music room, where I totally slayed the toy piano. All told, we were pretty well taken care of. We got our own furnished room to sleep in and eggs in the morning.  We’d told him that we prefer to eat vegetarian food, and in response he’d asked for examples. He was especially proud of the cantaloupe he’d gotten us. He did pretty well, and it was our fault that our second night in town ended with a late night drunken frozen fish stick and chicken nugget binge.

Indeed, there was a second night in town. Their show the next night had fallen through and we’d all been scrambling to find another nearby. The backup plan was to head to Charlottesville and see what we could find there, but at the house show we had met someone who said he might be able to put some extra acts on a concert at a DIY space. We ran into him at a cafe the next day and he had indeed come through for us. That afternoon was spent doing internet whatnot in various coffee shops around the quaint downtown. On my way to move the car, I got stopped by a girl and had my picture taken for a fashion blog due to my ’90s ska shoes. She also came to the show. The guy found us at another cafe and gave us the good news that there would be a cookout before the show. Staunton for the win. The night was pretty fun, with a duo on tour from Boston headlining, and I sat in with the cellist for the first time ever. At some point I had already gotten promoted from merch girl to tour manager, so I’m not sure if playing in the band is a lateral or what.

The next morning we headed for Charlottesville, where we hit up their main drag and checked out Twisted Branch Tea Bazarre and the taco shop in the old movie theatre and grabbed coffee. It was a short visit, mostly indulging the fact that I had never seen the place. There were a variety of buskers out, which is always a good sign. Onward to Richmond, where the cellist had to catch a bus back to NYC. This left just the two of us, then I’d be a catching a bus myself and he’d be touring the Midwest for another month alone. Finding ourselves with some spare time and already in Richmond, we set out to get an oil change for the car and some new wiper blades. Thankfully, it also came with a vacuuming. Yes, someone cleaned our house for us. The sheer domesticity of this and other parts of the day led us to the term “common-law hobo-marriage.”

We didn’t see much of Richmond, which was alright with me since I had just been there on tour a couple months before. We spent most of our time in two of my favourite places, though, Lamplighter and Strange Matter. We spent a while at the first, soaking up the smell of coffee roasting while working respectively on the internet. I had a deadline for some freelance online work and he had to slog away on the endless booking frenzy of a solo touring musician. Eventually, we finished up and headed to Strange Matter for more sturdy food. It really is some of the better vegan bar food I’ve had, especially for a rock club. It was odd to be back at that venue but not playing, and even odder to be the merch girl at a metal show. I refused to wear makeup, but at least I wore high heels. I had a disconcerting dream a few nights later where I sold merch for Inferno and had imagined the whole being in the band part all along… Anyway, the show was actually kind of fun and I ran into some bike club folks who remembered me from Slaughterama a few years ago. It was also pretty hilarious to be doing merch at a Cannabis Corpse show. We’d been offered a place to sleep at the afterparty, but as soon as we got into the car, we felt the urge to get moving to the next city. The party was fun the little while we were there, but I’m sure we would’ve woken up in a pile of drunk metal dudes. So, the little car charged further South as the rain and sunrise came to meet us.

The hour or so of sleep in the parking lot of a random Waffle House was nothing compared to the comfy bedroom at my friend’s place in Wilmington, where we slept away a good chunk of the day once we got there. A couple days earlier I’d suddenly remembered that a friend from Emperor Norton’s had moved down there several years ago. I always forget which city he’s in (as I had done with another friend when we passed through Charlottesville), but thankfully I remembered just in time. He lives in a cute little house on the edge of town and the spare room happened to be vacant when we visited. Yet again we lucked into two nights in a row with the comfy bed. We woke in the afternoon to the smell of delicious homemade curry, showered, and headed out to explore the town a bit on the way to the show. My friend showed us the scenic view from the tallest parking garage as well as the most bohemian cafe in town (my usual tourist punk request). How could I not visit something called The Juggling Gypsy? They were even having a fire spin and drum jam that night; burners. I gave them an Occupy newsletter as well as one of the May Day posters we’d been traveling with, which they proudly displayed in the front window.

The guy who had booked the show turned up while we were at the cafe, sampling the vast expanses of coffee and cider, and we headed for the venue. My friend navigated us past the downtown waterfront with its cute shops and laundromat rock club and other ridiculous aspects I really ought to go back and explore. The show was at a place called Squidco, which is the most incredible avant-garde record store I have ever seen. The shop moved down there from NYC when they realized that mail order could be just as successful. The space and the folks at the show were lovely and the selection of recordings was overwhelming. My friend invited some local punks, which spiced up the vibe a bit as well as depleted the free wine. We all went back to his house and jammed out on his piano and drum kit for a while. I pulled out my sax and we tried to hazily remember Emperor Norton’s tunes. The next morning, the punks showed up on our doorstep with homemade pancakes and hashbrowns. What could be better?

…Going to the beach, that’s what! We got to go to the ocean! It was too cold to swim but we got our legs wet. I found the most wonderful seashell in the world, the size and shape of a sword hilt and flecked grey with wear. We also saw dead jellyfish in all stages of devouring crabs. I’d never touched one and was astonished how solid they feel when you poke them with a shoe. We walked around on the beach for a while before heading back to the house to regroup and take off. I routed us through South Carolina, hoping it would be less hilly, but also so we could make our rest stop at the fantastically tacky South of the Border, which my co-pilot scoffed at but nevertheless immediately put the sticker on his suitcase.

We reached Asheville by dark and again just in time for the show. I was hungry and cranky but sometimes this is how touring goes. It was a pretty long drive and I probably didn’t pick the wisest place to grab quick lunch. I was pretty glad to be back in that town, though. The experimental show was at Izzy’s, which is a pretty sweet little cafe on my favourite street in town. After the set, we hit up The Getdown for a little bit, then got cheap vegan food at Rosetta’s Kitchen before heading to bed around the corner. We were staying with my friend from Helblinki and her puppeteer beau. Their space is pretty incredible, full of puppets and instruments and circus chaos. While writing this, my computer wasn’t recognizing the name of the city as a real word, instead suggesting “Vaudeville”… which is a fine substitute.

We slept quite long considering we were on the living room floor due to a busted air mattress and a tiny couch. We got up and out in the afternoon, taking advantage of a pleasant Saturday by busking in shifts on the street. I ran to the car to get posters and newsletters to give to Rosetta’s Kitchen, where I grabbed us lunch to go and scored a couple Occupy Asheville patches. Meanwhile, he busked us up some money until I got back, at which point he ate while I had a go at street performing. Unfortunately, we don’t know any of the same songs, and sax/violin improv isn’t a big breadwinner with tourists. We made a bit of money, then headed back to the garage apartment to regroup and send him on his way.

My hobeau had to head West for another show that night, while I remained in Asheville. Just before he took off, another houseguest arrived who is also a fiddler, so at least I had a surrogate violin friend for the transition. I was staying in town another day to help our hosts with their Puppet Slam that night. On the way, the local fiddler and I ran into a bunch of buskers he knew, including one who was playing an upright piano right on the street corner. We stopped into Firestorm Cafe and Books, where I dropped off more May Day and Occupy propaganda and caught some of the revolution and labor songs performance. We then ran to the supermarket to better stock the makeshift bar for the show that night, of which I had been put in charge. I made more in tips than I had busking, even after sharing it with him. The puppet show was a splendid collection of five minute sketches by a wide variety of local performers and it sold out a decent sized little theatre. We had a mild afterparty at their place where the group of us drank avocado smoothies and watched puppetry videos until we passed out on the living room floor. I missed my travel partner, but it was a beautiful night nonetheless.

The next day we woke up in a pile, surprisingly rested. There were pancakes and coffee, a theme on this trip. My friend and I then set out for busking in strikingly coordinated outfits; some lady assumed we were French. Playing accordion and saxophone, she and I really had no choice but to play a lot of D harmonic minor. We knew a few songs in common and I followed along on some of her originals. It wasn’t nearly as busy as the day before, but we made a little bit of cash. Between those two days, I left Asheville with more money than when I’d arrived. A friend I met in Key West had just moved to Asheville a few days before I got there and had come to the show the previous night. He happened to be reading in the nearby park and followed the sound of a saxophone to us, guessing correctly that it was me. Eventually, we were all completely distracted by a group of Morris dancers who marched past us on their way to perform at the park. I couldn’t shut up about how awesome it was to see Morris dancers and about the troupes I’d seen in England, Vancouver, and Chicago. I have an unnatural obsession with it and hope to someday form some sort of fusion troupe if and when I settle down somewhere. This group had the most unusual horse I’d ever seen, not a puppet but a guy pretending to ride one.

After we’d given up entirely on busking, we wandered around until we met up with my friend’s boyfriend, who works with the coolest bus tour company in Asheville. We got to see him dressed as a nun, then a sports fan, then a nun again but this time on a tall bike with squirt pistols. I heard that he had to shave his awesome mustache to get the job, but only because he has to eat fire at the start of the tours. We found the bus again at the co-op where their roommate works. Asheville is small but lovely. We met back up with the fiddle player and he dropped me off at a yard sale where I finally got to hang out with my local Valentine’s Day friend and a bunch of punks. One of them was selling a really nice bike he’d fixed up, so I called my Key West friend and I think they worked out a deal. I felt like I must have introduced him to more people in a few hours than he’d met in many days there.

I had persuaded my local musician friends to give me a ride to the bus that night. I’d learned that there was an overnight one which goes from towns an hour South of Asheville directly to New York City for fifty bucks – not bad. Our little road trip was made even more fun by a stop at a roadside custard shop/Indian restaurant. We ordered from the same counter for both and ate a bunch of delicious food on the patio as the sun set over the railroad tracks behind us. Below there was a little waterfall and a large collection of garden gnomes. It was pretty spectacular. The rest of the night was pretty low-fi tour-tastic, with a late night pie stop at a Waffle House and loitering in a dark parking lot listening to music. Finally, the bus turned up (late and full) and I slept the entire ride to NYC. It took a good hour and several cups of coffee in a charming French bistro in Chinatown for me to feel aware enough to get back on public transit and make the trip to Brooklyn. It wasn’t until I got a hot shower that I really shook off the bus ride. I busied myself with some housework and eased back into the city.

NYC… you again?

It’s been two and a half busy weeks since I got back from Boston. I pretty much picked up where I left off before my little trip out of town. My work load lightened up a lot, thankfully, so I spent more time on music and activism. I busied myself with a variety of things, my activities centering around a loft I had all to myself in Chelsea for most of a week, followed by my mother being in town for about as long. It’s easier to describe those weeks topically, so bear in mind that the chronology is a moot point. I’m also slightly glossing over fantastic and overwhelming personal developments that my complicated self is having a hard enough time processing, let alone describing to the masses. How’s that for vague?

First piece of stability, the borrowed loft in Chelsea. Being a transient with an odd living situation and spending a lot of time the past month with another lifestyle touring musician with vague arrangements, it was wonderful to have a genuine apartment. So seldom do I have the supreme combination of bed, full bath, kitchen, laundry, wifi, and windows. Perks like the impressive sound system and nine foot Steinway piano weren’t too shabby either. My week became so busy, I only occasionally had time to indulge in lounging around the place, practicing various instruments, sleeping in, and wandering the neighborhood. While my friend/boss was away, I had a couple of tasks to accomplish around the apartment. I rented a rug cleaner from the hardware store and cleaned the massive rug someone had given him – no small feat for someone as inept and inexperienced at renting things and using such technology as myself. The other job was much more in my department. When you enter the apartment, the first thing you see is a plain white wall with a door and some elevated moldings. I immediately recognized its potential, and my friend encouraged me to go forward with my vision.

A few days after I settled back into the sub-basement, my mother came to town. This time, she was chaperoning her musical theatre students and staying near the Southwest corner of Central Park. Part of why I hadn’t made it back to Chicago between tours was the fact that she was coming to New York once a month anyway. I could hang out in Chicago, or I could run around and have girl time with my mother while we see shows here. I even let her convince me to go dress shopping at one of the big discount designer sort of places. I rarely ever buy brand new clothes or shop in massive chain stores, but it was kind of novel – if overwhelming. I also got a new swimsuit, which was well needed since all the ones I’ve been wearing all these years are from high school. My mother and I went out to eat a lot that week too – meals by ourselves, meals with her friends, meals with my friends. It was wonderful. We spent one afternoon wandering around Chelsea and all along the Highline and I wore my pretty new dress and vaguely pretended we were bourgeois, visiting the vintage sewing machines at All Saints. On her last full day in town, I headed to a cafe in uptown for a casual brunch with my best friend from college (who lives in New Orleans and hadn’t seen my mother since college), assorted boyfriends, and my mother. So many people I care about it one place, epic.

After everyone dispersed, I headed over to Central Park to check out the Occupy action that was happening there throughout the day. A couple of brass band folks made a tiny horn section among the inevitable haphazard drum line. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my horn with me, but I was still in a state of massive recovery after being a hot mess from too much circus partying the night before. Lesson learned, hopefully. The demonstration was beautiful, very peaceful and informative. I reveled in the possible culmination of my teenage hopes that, within my lifetime, there would be a movement akin to the ’60s. In many ways, though, the Occupy movement speaks more to me than much of the hippy era. I laid in the grass and watched the crowds spread out around the park – circled in group discussions, playing music, distributing propaganda, making plans. I even got to see a performance by The Tax Dodgers,  a clever fake baseball team. Eventually, I walked to meet my mother and we went to dinner with my New York friend from high school, who she hadn’t seen since we were teenagers. That night, we saw Peter and the Star Catcher with some of her students; it’s the origin story of Peter Pan and the production was absolutely brilliant.

All that time spent in Manhattan made it a lot easier to get involved with the Occupy in Union Square, although my involvement continued after I was back in Brooklyn. I made it to some of the midnight protest theatre happenings, including a rap battle between occupiers and the cops (you can guess who didn’t throw down on the rapping). I was especially pleased to get involved with Ballet Barre on the Barricades, a bi-weekly event where a lady (coincidentally from my old college) leads a free ballet class with live music, and we wear newspaper tutus and use the police barricades as ballet barres. Because I didn’t stay on tour in Massachusetts longer, I got to attend a general Occupy Union Square meeting, but of course was distracted from it by a marching band. I was on the phone trying to arrange just such a band for an Occupy-related book release the next day, when suddenly a brass band containing no familiar faces came parading past me, led by a friend from Time’s Up on a cargo bike. I was correct in my guess that it was Bread and Puppet, but alas they were leaving town the next day to play a show in Ohio. It worked out in the end, though, and a marching band did come together the next evening and led a large group of people through the streets of DUMBO towards free food and beer.

The day of the book event, I had come straight from a meeting at the Living Theatre. I felt privileged to be at the first meeting outlining their collaboration with Occupy Museums, a group I was glad to be involving myself with. As someone who studied radical theatre extensively in college and owns a massive copy of her collected early diaries, being in Judith Malina’s apartment was incredible. I managed not to say anything to embarrassing to her about what a bad ass she is. I’d met her at the theatre before and even played music at a performance or two there, but I still get a little star-struck around her. I mean, the woman has been doing experimental and radical theatre since the 1940s, has been arrested in something like a dozen different countries, and she’s still raging! Besides my awe, the meeting went well and the ensuing hanging out was also a lot of fun. Since I didn’t go tag along on tour in New Jersey this week, I made it to the Occupy Museums open meeting about arts and activism, another edifying event exploring the relation between the two worlds. I met a random occupier who was on his way to the protest and brought him along to the meeting, which was quite well attended anyway. It lasted for hours and explored a broad range of topics. By the end, the numbers had dwindled considerably, but I could have stayed and kept talking for another hour. Afterwards, some of us wandered over to the protest down the street, where the late night theatre of dissent continued to weave its magic.

While in theory I was still out East for the band, it took a while for Inferno rehearsals to start back up. I also finally decided to start attending Rude Mechanical Orchestra practices in the meantime. After the first one, I had to hurry off to help at the space in Downtown Brooklyn, where my constant companion was throwing a composer/occupier concert and dialogue. It was the most well-attended show I had ever seen there and I finally got to meet the lady who runs the space. I wound up covering the “bar” for the whole night, with backup supply run help from the members of RMO who made it over for the show. I like having a role at shows and parties, it’s nice to have a purpose and you even meet more people that way. I saw several good shows at that space over the last few weeks, as well as at the spot in Chelsea. Unlike your average regular venue, these sorts of concerts allow a way better chance for conversations with the people there.

I happened to be in town for Slavic Soul Party’s album release, where they had a special guest Finnish circus performer doing acrobatics out front of the band. The end of the night was exceptionally memorable, which is saying a lot considering I’ve been seeing shows at Barbes pretty regularly for over six years now. After the band ended, someone started playing “Down by the Riverside” on the piano. I couldn’t resist the temptation and pulled out my clarinet to join in. Then, the random button accordion player who had turned up started playing a drone on just the right chord, so I did a somewhat sloppy but sincere version of the intro to “Ederleizi” which one of the SSP guys joined in on trumpet. The night dwindled on at the bar until it was me and two of my friends from the brass band scene, one of whom happened to be bartending. We sat and listened to various obscure bits of world music on the stereo for what felt like hours. The friend who was on my side of the bar was ringing in a big birthday that night, and he had closed the night with me on two previous New York birthdays, so it only seemed appropriate.

The next day, I had the classic unexpected day in New York. I went to Chelsea to do a quick hour of work on a project at the space, but it wound up being a wash after all. Fortunately, my friend from high school was just waking up, so we were able to go out for lunch and have a nice long chat. I decided to then walk over to Union Square and browse the farmers market and visit Occupy. Inevitably, I ran into someone I haven’t seen in months. Finally I headed into the subway, only to discover a friend of mine busking. Suddenly, my quick hour of work and day spent at “home” catching up on things turned into hours of busking. I just happened to have my clarinet and washboard with me, which fit in perfectly with their banjo, spoons, and bones. They informed me that Vermont Joy Parade was playing at the Jalopy that night, so suddenly I was running “home” for an hour or two and then out all night.

The show was a lot of fun and it was a treat to see the folks in that band again. A busking friend from New Orleans had even joined the band since I last saw them play. The Jalopy always gives me this wonderful piece of time in which I can pretend I’m anywhere but New York; most nights, it’s New Orleans. The crowd there is always exceptional as well, and now that the venue owns the bar next door, staying out until 4am on a Wednesday suddenly got more appealing. On a side note, at the various shows I worked at, volunteered to help with, or simply attended, I wound up randomly meeting various folks who are heavily involved in the NYC Steampunk scene. It was fun to meet folks who had never heard of Inferno but were psyched to hear I was in Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band.

can’t escape the big city for long

Yet another tardy post – this is the rest of March in New York City…

While I was grateful to have had a chance to recharge myself after tour, I found myself so uncommonly busy on my return to NYC after my second weekend in Baltimore that I barely had enough time to think, let alone dwell on anything. Somehow, this sparseness and clarity made it possible for me to focus what little time I had left on getting further involved with the Occupy movement, which has been a sadly neglected priority whenever I’m in town. I tend to be most productive when I’m too busy to second guess or dwell on anything.

I had what was possibly my most intense work week ever. I put in three long days helping build nine solid oak bookshelves at the new music space in Chelsea, then two days at the old venue in Brooklyn, one of which I later worked an event back in Chelsea, then two days helping with a dog show at the one in Brooklyn with another event in Chelsea on one of those evenings. All told, it was about eighty hours in one week, with 60 of those being five days of manual labour. Needless to say, blogging took a back seat. I think I spent most of Monday asleep, but somehow managed two more days at the Brooklyn venue that week, hauling buckets of sand and dirt up two stories to the roof.

While I’m making my time back in New York sound pretty grueling, it really wasn’t so bad. After one tough day in Chelsea, I got given money to take myself out to dinner and then spent it luxuriously writing in a French bistro. I like working with my hands and the week go me back in shape. The events which I worked were all pretty fun and the dog show was especially ridiculous. I normally have mixed feelings about dogs wearing clothing, but the Star Wars versus Star Trek costume contest was incredible. It was nice getting back into a routine at the old venue.  Not since pedicabbing have I worked in one place for a full year, albeit in waves. One afternoon, as I was getting ready to leave, someone poked their head in the door to ask if the cafe was open. I knew there had been a reason I’d neglected to put the closed sign on the door earlier. Even though he was too late, he won us over by pointing out that I had stayed at his house in Boston six years ago. Of course I did and of course he works at the bike shop around the corner. The world is unsettlingly small. On my bike rides to and from work that day, I marveled at the flowering trees which were in bloom throughout the posher parts of the neighborhood. It wasn’t long before I paid the shop where he works a visit, throwing down a modest sum to use their stand and tools for an hour to do some tuning up on my bike, but mostly to replace the brake cables which had already begun snapping on me. Normally, I would go to a co-op or a collective to work on my bike, but riding to Time’s Up from work with no brakes seemed pretty foolish.Regardless, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of fixing your own bike.

Most of my free time was spent with my new constant companion and/or at Occupy Union Square. There was a big event one night with tons of people and lines of cops, but every time I came by around midnight, the crowds were engaging in some level of protest theatre as the police shut down the park. It became more theatrical and absurd every time I participated. I definitely felt more of a kinship there than I had at Liberty Square, for reasons I am still figuring out. In short, though, that general part of Manhattan has always been somewhat sacred to me, plus the historical significance of Union Square in radical politics is certainly heavy. I need to put more thought into why I’ve felt this way and I will try to explain it better soon… I also caught the very end of the day-long Occupy Fort Greene in Brooklyn, which happened on a beautiful day atop a hill. I began to get increasingly drawn to Occupy Museums and made it down to one of their meetings at 60 Wall St. Again, I finally found an Occupy group that I was not only interested in, but felt useful and comfortable with. I also finally went over to the Great Small Works space to help with building puppets for the Puppet Guild. I stole my friend away after RMO practice – at which point I was lovingly called out for never coming to practice with them – and we touched up the paint on the giant Brooklyn Bridge for a while. Afterwards, we went to a nearby building for the Spaghetti Dinner, where the puppet show was over but there was still hot food.

Outside of Occupy, most of my socializing happened at new music events, which is a strange but somehow inevitable evolution in my life. Besides the space in Chelsea, I wound up getting quite involved at a space in downtown Brooklyn. If I wasn’t seeing a show there, I was helping with the bar, or even just practicing when I went to hang out with my friend in the wee hours. I even managed to record some horn line ideas for the band and email them out, both times around 7am after a long night with laptops and instruments and the ever alluring comfy couch. I ate far too many toasted dumpster bagels there in the past month.

The dense work week made my time between Baltimore and Boston (more on that soon) seem like a blur, yet I got a lot accomplished in a seemingly small and limited time. It was also a huge release to have a massive amount of income all at once, which allowed me to relax a bit and focus on my projects and priorities. For someone who has refused to move to NYC for seven years of nearly living there, I seem to be getting a lot out of my time here lately.

another week in New York

Apologies for the long delay in posting, but I needed some extensive time to myself. As with any period where I’m off the road (so… am I off-roading?), the attention toward taking care of myself and plotting my next move tends to put a significant dent in my time for blogging. That’s not to say that I haven’t been writing or doing interesting things, I just lack the discipline needed to persevere without the structure of long drives and a one-per-show goal. Since getting back to NYC and settling into some sort of life, I’ve had the added bonus of living in what is essentially a cave, so my friends have seen me with barely more consistency than this blog has. I can’t remember the last time I had a place to live with my very own door! So, I’ve made little notes and continued to chip away slowly at this post, yet it has evaded completion until now.

The question now – what in fact was I doing the first couple of weeks of March? Well, there was quite a bit of hiding in the dark basement in Bed-Stuy. While there was much catching up on sleep, I cobbled together a decent routine of fasting, yoga, and practicing the accordion. I’d get a tune stuck in my head the night before, look up the chords online, then begin learning it whenever I woke up. It was like an artistic retreat for my short attention span – no risk of distraction. When I would break out of my self-imposed exile, I mostly stayed local. A startling number of friends live in the neighborhood, not to mention the fact that Goodbye Blue Monday and Project Parlour are walking distance, as are Tiny Cup and Square Root Cafe. In spite of myself, I’m realizing I’ve missed the neighborhood. It became a time of good late night cabaret shows (including the weekly open mic nearby with its modern-day beatniks) and mid-afternoon brunches. Fortunately, despite the creeping gentrification of the neighborhood, nothing obnoxiously hip has reared its ugly head this side of Broadway – yet.

My living situation continued to work out quite well. Keeping the house relatively tidy wasn’t too difficult and I relished tasks like cleaning out the refrigerator. During one weekend, there was a houseguest from Toronto who insisted on doing the dishes, which made my role in the household even easier. She had come down from Toronto for a Burning Man camp party that weekend and it turned out that we had numerous friends in common. We got along quite well despite the 20ish year age gap. I was headed to Bryant Park for an Occupy action one morning and took her along with me on our way to respective destinations in NYC. Of course, by the time I got there, the people I knew had been arrested – one for riding his bicycle on the street and the other for dressing up as a clown and being cheerful. We ran into a friend of mine from the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, who was glowing from the peaceful direct action they had successfully executed earlier that morning. By the time we arrived, though, the event was dispersing and a light rain was falling. I met a charmingly shy violinist, though, and we made plans to go busking sometime soon.

The main point of my trip downtown was to meet up at Grand Central with one of the Broadway child actors for whom I sometimes nanny. He had an audition that day and I was responsible for keeping an eye on him until he headed back to Connecticut. Somehow I wound up with a large chunk of time to kill between the protest and work, so I sought shelter in the massive old public library. I had visited it a few times before, but each feels like the first; I tend to forget the majesty of the building. Our culture has become so conditioned by consumerism to think bookstores and coffee shops are the only public places fit for loitering over a book or on the internet. I was astonished by how few people were in the library despite the rain. I also think that most people, New Yorkers and tourists alike, tend to assume that nothing in Midtown is free. Somehow I had forgotten that the main library has exhibits as well. I lost myself for about an hour in a tiny room devoted to the life of Percy Shelley, making it only halfway across the room. I had a fun time looking after the kid again, he had a good audition, and he showed me an awesome little cafe in the back of an old church where the prices are good and you can loiter in their library undisturbed. Again, it was not terribly full. After I dropped him off at the train, I met up with my friend who had been arrested earlier in the day and dragged him back to the big library with me. We looked at activist relics in a huge exhibit which was closing that weekend, finished up the Shelley room (xo Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley), and took a lap around the building. Afterwards, we went looking for food and somehow wound up at a Moroccan hookah bar with live jazz.

My final destination in Manhattan that day was a late-night monthly open mic in the top floor of a place on restaurant row. My mother’s friend has been in the same Broadway show for about a decade and this small cabaret is where he and a handful of other stage professionals get a chance to try something a little different. The actors and musicians perform material unlike what they do at work, original pieces or not, while the tech crew try their hands at stand-up comedy and ballads. It felt like an honor to be there. The only people who hadn’t been invited were two Australian tourists who smiled broadly the entire time.

A highlight of my time back in NYC was an event at my friend’s DIY speakeasy space near the Brooklyn Navy Yards. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a New Wave sing along, but it was brilliant. It was led by a few folks who guided us through both protest songs and new wave classics. I had been working on a Nouvelle Vague version of a Clash song on the accordion, so I found the banjo-led renditions particularly interesting. I took note of more songs I should learn. Playing an instrument with chords has opened up a whole new world of possibilities to me. I began to emerge slightly from my basement and jam with friends, including at an exciting spot in a run-down old school beside a church.

I was rewarded for finally leaving my neighborhood by an exceptionally eccentric Saturday. I began the afternoon accompanying a friend to a monthly Baroque dancing class in downtown Brooklyn. It was actually a whole lot of fun and the music was provided by a live violin player, plus I can now say I have a vague idea how to dance a Minuet. Awesome! On the complete opposite end of the musical spectrum, I spent the evening helping out and partying at the annual Purim pageant and dance party. I’ve heard it is arguably the funnest annual party for anyone in the radical, brass band, klezmer, puppet, labor, queer, and/or trans scenes. It goes without saying that the RMO was there and played a fabulous set. The pageant was long and epic. One of my volunteer tasks was finding change for the bar – twenty dollars at a time, it turned out. This led me on an absurd adventure through a somewhat desolate part of Brooklyn, including a guy who claimed to be a famous Mexican singer and insisted on buying me old man brandy before his friends at the bar would buy me change. The party itself was far more fun.

The next morning, I explored an incredible warehouse co-op space and hit up the Brooklyn Flea Market in its historic indoor winter settings, found a feminist hardware store, and had a long sunset brunch at a friend’s place. Full of fresh energy, we hit up an Occupy meeting back in downtown Brooklyn and plugged the bicycle agenda, grabbed a little more nourishment at Grub, headed to the LES to sit in on the Time’s Up radio hour, then rode our respectively absurd big and little bikes back over the bridge to Brooklyn. It felt like old days when I was first sort of living in Brooklyn. I stopped in at Project Parlour to say hi to the DJ, but of course recognized a variety of folks and succumbed to the free and ready hot cider, flattery, and vintage cocktails. The next day I had the headache I deserved, plus the added pain of sleeping through a friend leaving town.

After a fairly useless day, I was back in downtown Brooklyn, a place I’ve found myself with increasing frequency this year. On a side note, one of my friends insists that my blog is not personal or travel but indeed a food blog. While I deny such claims, it is true that I talk about food quite a bit here. If you’ve been on tour, you probably understand. As I was saying, though, I went to two food spots in Brooklyn on the same unlikely strip near downtown which were pretty remarkable. A friend and I went out to a fantastic lunch at a bizarre vegan place that gives you funky, self-referential comic books at the door. After he took off on his outlandish bicycle, I decided to loiter a bit at a fantastically dirty bohemian cafe nearby. I was thrilled to find such an unlikely place in a neighborhood like that, which appeared to have gentrified around it. The sad word on the street was that the cafe was closing soon. I finally retired to my cave and got to back to productive hibernation which, along with some housecleaning, busied me until the weekend. I also got back to working at the same old venue, where I spent numerous hours sweeping up fake snow from their last theatre production. I doubt I will be able to appreciate a staged snow fall for quite some time. I was out of shape for manual labour, so it was a tiring day, but fortunately I finished out the night hanging out with friends who play accordion and banjo. Overall, New York was quite welcoming towards my slow return to its strange embrace.

Occupy Wall St: Day of Action

Live Updates (occupywallst.org)

• 8:23 pm: There is now a people’s library, a marching band and a projector on the Brooklyn Bridge, according to @occupywallst people on the ground.

I was supposed to be in that band, or one like it among the many tonight, but I am in Chicago. I never expected that if the Revolution came I’d be stuck inside nursing a wound. Nevertheless, I’m following as well as I can online, whatever it becomes.

More posts coming soon, but there are far more important things to follow on the internet.

Get off your computers and out into the streets!