This is The Hood

 

　
30 August 2014

"This is The Hood" 

Dear Kearia,
Meeting you so serendipitously in downtown Lafayette on Monday, as you slipped out of that sporty yellow car, was not only a pleasure but, reason enough to question one’s philosophical ideology in life. As you speedily drove into that parking lot, I jumped out of my “Cargo Can” with a sense of urgency, before you disappeared, to ask directions to Star Bucks.


“Oh maan… that is waay… waay across town. This is The Hood!… give me a few minutes in there (pointing to a building across the street)… come with me, I won’t be long and then you can follow me to Starbucks”.

Inside was a rather funky bar with thick “live edge” wooden bar/tables, old diner tables, MDF paneling , imitation brick chimney, coloured glass bottle somethings as window displays, found pictures, a big flat TV screen covering one whole wall playing a very raunchy video blasting out Hip Hop to pumping, gyrating black asses, while her 11 year old son sat quitely, in an uncensored manner of homey familiarity, watching, as I too, rapped up in the rhythmic beat and in those seductive, perfectly sumptuous, pear shaped, voodoo stomping, gluteus maximus muscles with those forceful pelvic thrusts. Nothing in this place, with its low ceiling, randomly pasted with coloured rectangular, diamond shape chunks of wood or something, could possibly harmonize to any design plan other than some esoteric, instinctive force of nature. Looked like some artsy fartsy pals simply went out on the street or in back alleys on recycling day, picked up a truck load of discarded, precious items, that were shiny or captured the eye, brought them back and playfully threw them into the room. Where they stuck… was where they called home.

 

 

Kearia then lead me into a pitch black room and opened a magic into another mesmerizing space, with similar mismatched objects of tables chairs, benches, a raised up sound booth, accidental wall and floor collages in brick, metal, exposed drain pipes, concrete, wood, siding but, here with higher ceilings (partially open to the sky), …where roof lines and the backs of exterior buildings became interior walls of Frankie’s Burger.

It was all a genuine, ingenious, unpretentious, idiosyncratic mix of cultural confidence, diversity and original inventiveness that can only be found in “The Hood!”

 

 

And then the Pièce de résistance… a stage!

Suddenly I was excited. It all came together, as I enthusiastically declared, “I am coming back here… I love this place… I am from Canada


“Are you one of those “Blue Birds?’ she asked. “No, I don’t have enough money to be a Blue Bird and would not be one even if I did have the money… I am an artist”…

“A musician” she asked. “I do play music but, don’t call myself a musician but, we are going to do something here on that stage” I said.

“Yes we are” she said.


It was like we suddenly connected and embraced each other in mutual understanding. Another heroine had just entered my life. As she focused on a sound test with her assistant, I poked around and found another long room, obviously an old ally in past building incarnations

This bar/club/theatre was absolutely fascinating and definitely fashioned on some eccentric, maybe mythical plan that suited my genetic heritage of old. I imagined it many, many times as a place in which I would feel comfortable, to be an artist musician.

Kearia finished her sound checks inside and on the street, called her son from that sassy assy video screen and instructed me to follow her, which I did, for miles across Lafayette… maybe 20 minutes, from the Hood to the insular, university preppy hub of academia… so different from what I can imagine life to be in THE HOOD, especially when the sun goes down.

When we reached Starbucks we exchanged contact info and agreed, with a warm hug, that our meeting was not by accident.

“I do not believe in God or destiny” I told her, “but, I am searching”. “For what is” she added.

She turned, looked inside her car and said something to her son in another language. “What is that language” I asked. “I speak eight languages and was born in India” That kind of explained or gave me another insight into her… shall I call it, spirituality… her warmth and embracing generosity.

Although I find it difficult to believe in an existence beyond genetic inheritance and DNA evolution, meeting Kearia seems more than an accident of chance, as it seems a perfect fit to my long held imagination of place…home. Was it simply a delightful serendipitous moment of chance? Let me see, as I plan to follow through, go back to Frankie’s Burger in the new year.

See you later…

Selamat tinggal


Rod

Nellie's Blues

In my sense of Starbuck urgency… (in my previous blog) they, displaying squinting, clandestine eyes, watching me, after two plus hours typing and getting free hot water refills in my tea cup, at that little table by the window, I closed down hurriedly and escaped without looking back.

It is not that I was taking space from waiting customers and I did pay $9 American bucks for tea, a croissant, and a sumptuous piece of banana cake at the outset… an expensive two plus hours for the use of their internet… which they advertise… “Free WiFi”. Of course I know it is not free. I would likely have been shunned out earlier with jabbing dagger eyes had I not purchased, basically my breakfast. But, I figured my strategy was all wrong.

I should have simply purchased a cup of tea and then gone back for a refill after about 20 minutes. Take another 20 minutes, go back for another free refill but, this time purchase a croissant. After about another 20 minutes or more, go back for another hot refill and purchase the banana cake. Then spend the next hour finishing that cup of tea. With this strategy my total purchase amount would be the same… $9 bucks. But I could easily have stretched that up to two to three hours while the staff offered no dagger eyes but, wait with anticipation and shallow, glancing, smiling cheeks for another purchase… Success is all in the perception. I will field test this strategy in my next Starbuck breakfast.

That is devilishly amusing… but, let me finish my last blog by explaining the fruit photo above. Throughout the day or after meals, to balance my diet, I eat fresh fruit… bananas, pears, peaches, apples, oranges, tomatoes, avocados. One might argue that tomatoes and avocados are not fruit but, vegetables… but not so. They have come out, they are swing fruits. So enjoy them with pleasure.

Just a little back tracking. I referred, in a previous blog to a rock formation looking like the pages of ancient books. This is a much better sample… like a recently discovered geological book of time (ancient weathered manuscripts)

Now, let me give you a little tour on the inside of my travelling cargo can.

Down that long hallway (ha) at the back doors is my sleeping bag, which I simply roll out at night time.

Coleman stove, fold up table and ladder/seat, tool box

A pile of show gear…flood lights, tripods, musical cables, music stand, microphone stand, loop pedal, digital head mic, plus regular industry rough and ready mic, camcorder tapes, canvass, art paintings, extension cords, show boots, bicycles gear, ladder for climbing up on roof, broom, etc…every thing one need for an "on the spot" show

Dinner table, fold up work table, with magnetic pencil/push pin/staple boxes, that conveniently stick to the metal sidewall of the van. Under the table are my guitars and banjitar, milk cartons filled with reference material of past project, kitchen posts and pans and utensils and an African drum.

Front of the van with two coolers, one with ice, the other electric (testing it for highway efficiency). Ice in a regular cooler will last comfortably for over two days.

My black hat, which I use in stage shows around which I tell road stories, including of how I met Chief Sitting Bull of Custer's Last Stand

Musically practice day… trying to learn the blues. I am certainly not a musician but, am determined to write a blues song, which I will call “Nellie’s Blues”. I have only ever known about four strumming chords. Have tried music lessons with instructors but, have failed miserably… mostly my rhythm is a disaster in the company of musicians… who can actually play.. The blues is a whole new world of…”finger picking”.

There is something about Nellie… pathos… I see in her face that grips my feelings for her. Can you see it… there is no smile in her face… is it simply me… projecting… about tears I see in her inner world? What do you see in her face... a woman who was buried in an unmarked grave at the age of 38....

Cousins Laura and Nancy and I are “digging up Nellie” and other cousin’s want to join us, fantastic. This has become a focus point for my trip. That tied, integrally, to getting her a headstone, to mark her death bed in this world. Are there any face readers out there who can say, just by looking at that photo, what is inside that dear grandmother of mine. I know this woman suffered, before she died at 38. I would love some feedback here, so that I may write a beautiful song with real passion… you know, like Robert Johnson. Big Bill Brusy or other delta blue greats have written.

There is something else that Laura said… maybe my music needs a different frequency from the standard 440 tuning… to be in harmony with my inner rhythm. My “crossroads“. I have never heard that before but, there could be something to it … worth some research!

Well, I finally got to Galveston in my search for heroines of the Texas Revolution. I was whole heartedly disappointed. The statue was not what I remembered from my visit four years previous. There is no story of heroines. That was simply my projection, my fantasy, my wishful thinking. There certainly are woman all over that sculpture but, they are simply metaphors… Grecian goddesses.

I left the city feeling it was a waste of time, too hot, too crowded with tourists, flooding the streets and side walk cafes, no place to park. I just had to leave. One house caught my eye on the way out, so I stopped, trying to find reason to justify my whimsy for being there in the first place… looking for heroines… so damn silly.

It was the Moody House, meant nothing to me, but it was open to tourists, so I popped in, landed right in the middle of one of those stupid tours and tagged along,,, sheepishly, as there may have been a ticket fee. After 10 minutes of slithering along the side back of the group, I got tired of that silly woman, her pompous, pretentious expressions and slithered out, as I came in, least I was about to vomit and collapse from her and the crowds oohs and ahs about whether the woman house owner, a century earlier slipped her husband a bit of arsenic,  garbage into his cup so she could get the house and his money, (rhetorical, Agatha Christie) before that old bitch died herself… truly, this was the obnoxious chat of that ugly woman guide and the giddy sedated, empty headed group. I could not get out of there and that city fast enough.

Anyway, who really gives a damn about a limestone (“shipped from Europe!!!”) ostentatious, Disneyland house, for monied idiots.

But, look what I came across on my way out of town in a couple towns along, Kemah, Texas, Bay Port Road, Highway 146, leaving that town… leads one to leak incontinently with joy…

Finally, let me tell you the poignant joy of my day:

That is right… cotton. I came across fields and fields of cotton. First time I had actually seen it in real life. I cut two flowering buds and went back in another along the road to cut a whole small bush. This was a profound moment for me as we know the history of suffering, slavery, Lincoln and abolition and recall today, the shooting of a black man, by a white police officer and the ground swell of on-street protest and violence, revealing the ongoing fact of disturbing racial undercurrents, that erupt in an instance. It is disturbing. Will it ever diminish… can it? Is it humanly possible, with the pressures and demands of claustrophobic population forces and cross cultural pollination?

I said “poignant joy” because, it made me feel the pulse of the human struggle. And, in retrospect, the artist of the Revolution sculpture may have felt the same, as he used women as the metaphor for the embracing values and the aspirations of human life... courage, honour, patriotism, devotion.

The day wasn’t bad after all. I remembered Meisha, as she and I stood there together... four years earlier. 

　

　

　

　

　

　


　

AlbuQ to Galvesten

22 August 2014

Leaving Albuquerque was like leaving home. It lingers with me after miles on the road. What started out four years ago as a first visit with distant, even barely known or unknown relatives… this time has truly become a whole new family. Aunt Carrie’s medical misfortunate and the excavation for Nellie has created a new embrace with us… cousins coming out of the soil of that fabulous digital network from virtually every geographical pin point on the map. The journey homeward promises titillating  discovers with new kinships, new embraces.

The long endless highways across NM and Texas draw me into ever expanding anticipations, expectations and challenges, with some level of anxiety, as I am basically a loner but, a Scorpio with somewhat of a scorpion personality.
 

And I become seduced with her, figuratively, with what is down there at the other end, as with that bikinied underwear clad ally girl on Bourbon Street with barely, as one would rhetorically describe, barely a stitch on, nervously shaking that mouse into the gutter out of her bedroom fan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The extreme contradictions in this land are thrilling, intriguing, palpitating, poetic. In just 180 degree… the soil goes from explosive ripe green to arid, crusty sand, where life still manages… with beauty.

And then to this wise old comical figure which I see as a mythical ancient grey bearded desert Yoda spider… giving the sagely advice to… “Go everywhere!”

 

 

So there I go, everywhere, in my cargo can. On top, I have my propane tanks, two containers of small carpentry tools, a ladder, pick, shovel, axes, a spare tire and two bicycles… everything that one needs for the unknown roads…people do ask, why two bicycles when I travel alone. Friends gave me four, long abandoned and I made two… one for me and one for a Doisy-do, with that gypsy woman I will meet along the highways… don’t laugh… I have had 100% success on previous trips. If the opportunity arises, if I would be invited… I will tell you more, show you the art, will read you the poetry and sing the songs I have written in memory of those poignant events.

You might find the interior even more intriguing… you might. I will not presume. I normally stop at the Interstate Rest Areas, which might be perceived as rather boring, overcrowded places with tourists in a hurry for a pee or truckers taking a sleep break, both of which are quite often true. But look at this…
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When I pulled in there last night, I assumed this was one of those big musical band tour buses or a charter bus for 60 or 80 people. Then an old man slowly stepped out, got a black bag from the luggage compartment and got back in. The driver, I wondered? ... sleeping in the seat across from the driver seat. That was it until morning… an elderly woman, seemingly somewhat arthritic climbed down, holding firmly unto the rail, with a white plastic bag in one hand and gingerly shuffled her way, I assumed to the facilities but, no... to the garbage bin, dropped the bag in and shuffled her way back. She was well groomed but, was wearing two different shoes. Seemed her hair was sort of blond. She opened the big door… steee-pted up carefully and disappeared for maybe a minute and a half. Then her head emerged slowly in view through the window. The head stopped, turned around and disappeared again... the door closed. The head reappeared attached to a slow moving body... both edging their way forward and faded through a door. An hour later, the bus started, rose up on its suspension airs bags and drove away.  These are merely the facts...least I should show my biases, I leave it to you to create your own story.

Then this big beautiful black man stopped by as I was preparing breakfast and commented on my Coleman stove. Told me a story about and old gas stove he had that was against the law to use again but, he was going to fix it up and sell it.

Next, a little old skinny dark Spanish looking  fellow came toward me smiling, about two remaining teeth displayed in his big smile. I shook his hand… “your name... Llewellyn? ” I pointed to the label on his shirt. He nodded yes, continuing with that near toothless smile. “My name is Rod…..”, I said.  He nodded again, with his big smile, as I knew he did not understand. “Rod… Rod, like fishing rod” and I gestured, as if casting a fishing pole. His smile grew bigger, covering face and eyes, as he shook his head up and down more lively and accommodating, while waving his hand as he moved on… meaning, “Have a great Day!” He was the cleaning staff.


Joe came by, gestured to help me tighten down my roof bikes. “Those straps are Home Depot garbage”, “Wal-Mart garbage” I yelled as he continued on to the facilities. The straps were literally disintegrating in the sun. He came back, took me to his big 18 wheeler and proudly showed me the proper straps to buy. We chatted at length about his beef cattle, his horses and his two Belmont Stakes wins ($40,000) and his plans to move from Massachusetts to Florida to get 50 acres, more horses and cattle because, in Mass… $7,000 taxes a month for his truck business… $3,000 in Florida. Said he makes  $2

a mile...$60,000 a month, coast to coast, $550,000 a year. Paid cash for his tractor and trailer… “Cash”

 
He dropped by again in passing when I was practising guitar and seem appreciative as I took time to explain the difference between a Dobro and regular guitar and I sang him an old country song… Wabash Cannon Ball.

 

 

 “I’ll see you on the road…” he said, “ I’ll know you… seen you before… will give you the horn…Road Buddy”

Finally, I got to breakfast… I try to eat healthy food on the road… cooking on my Coleman stove… two or three meals a day…

Breakfast.... Corn Tortillas, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, tea, orange.

Lunch.... Whole wheat tortillas with basically Caesar salad, toped with BBQ chicken

Supper... grits with cubed chicken mix and laced with various condiments... from little packages I pick up at the occasional café pit stop ... soya sauce, crushed peppercorns, parmesan, chili mix, hot sauce, etc.

Then to work. My Cargo Can is equipped with full accommodations, work space for writing, eating, sleeping and guitar practice. As I am feeling a little pressured to get out of this Starbucks Café, I will close now. My next blog will be titled: Nellie's Blues.

 

 

 



AlbuQ

18 August 2014

AlbuQ

I was walking along Central Avenue and came across a weathered busker playing a fiddle, dropped a buck into his case and listened to a traditional tune. He looked strong, lean with big rugged hands like a stone sculptor and fingers that seemed way too large for the small neck of the fiddle. But, his fingers were agile, somewhat acrobatic, not missing a note. He played to me, as I listened with sincerity and pleasure. His name was Bill., said he lives up there in the mountain… pointing east. “I do jobs for friends and make fiddles“.. he said, while being apologetic about the colour stain experiment on his fiddle. His sincerity made it all a work of art. “My name is Rod…. Rod” I repeated, as I shook his hand. “I’ll try to remember” he said “But I have CRS” “What”, I asked. “CRS… can’t remember shit!” I laughed with him, as I had not heard that expression before. But, its been around, I was told. My ABQ cousin uses it.


Tomorrow, after 13 days, I leave AlbuQ. They say ABQ around here but, I kind-a like AlbuQ. I leave with some feelings of ambivalence, as my dear Auntie, who was in the hospital when I arrived, got out and had to go back again yesterday. First, a car accident (broken bones, vertebrate, chest) then gallbladder removal, then a herniated intestine operation and extended complications with that, which were starving her to death. So she is back in again , for another intervention to dilate the intestine. But, through it all her sense of humour has not waned, nor has her wit and bold determination. She will make it.

Look at her, with that nose tube she calls her “elephant trunk” playing my banjitar in her hospital bed…and experimenting with a digital piano on her notebook… absolutely…Irrepressible, at 85 yrs…

 

She was out of the hospital for a few days, between stabbing, intestinal attacks, playing her organ. Her favourite musical instrument is the accordion sitting in dark bag behind her. This is all for real. She really is a musician.

　

I am glad I have her blood in my veins (from her mother, my grandmother)). She is an inspiration for me… another heroine in the revolution of life.

My Grandmother, Nellie, 1926 … another heroine

　

 

Seems like my “heroes” in life are firstly “heroines” in a mans‘ war, where men are self named “heroes“!. She is truly and factually, the reason why I am here in AlbuQ, on this mythical, magical, fantastical journey, that started fours years earlier, with a Facebook note from a first cousin I had never even known about. She and I are, along with her sister, equally enthusiastic on a “digging up Nellie” mission. It is fascinating… like shrouded in a misty, foggy clandestine night of secrecy and gossip… about a woman who gave birth to nine children with two different husbands, in two different countries and was interred, at 38, in an anonymous grave, Lot 225, in foreign soil.

Nellie… born in Malay Falls, Nova Scotia 1895 and had 11 siblings, grew up in a rough mosquito, black fly infested forest, where bear fat was your fly dope, where too many men cursed, fought each other with knives, where asses were kicked out the doors, family or not and they drank home brew to kill the pain, with stupefied laughter, where the women were mere kitchen baby staff.

Nellie, we called her, had six kids before she was 22... Born to a trapper, guide, bear, moose, caribou hunter, fishermen, river driver and story teller family. She probably rolled a few logs herself and was a bit of a revolutionary and adventurer. All her stories will never be told... went to the grave... many of them. She left the sticky, stinky, sticks, kids and all and not by choice and went to the USA 1924 and became a lady of class, with fancy hats to raise another family…a poignant Kafka-like story… where for some reason “did she-was she’ secrets continue to frack through the old soil of Malay Falls and across the border. There is a song to come... maybe in a rich Delta Blues genre. I just got a new (Dobro) guitar with a seductive, spoky sound.... goina' see what comes around and why her ass was kicked out the door… was she too much rebel, too much feminine sass… too much class? We have a lot of diggin’ to do under that grassy grave in Connecticut.

The first task in our mission is to get her a headstone, with her name proudly and properly chiselled into it, below a Mayflower, that is intrinsic to the coat of arms of her native Nova Scotia. Then we are going to dig her up... her story is out there in memories, letters, statistics and the growing curiosity of her descendants, spread around the continent of America.

Tomorrow, I leave AlbuQ, with a new passion, with a copied file of Aunt Carrie's letters and photos on Nellie. It is exciting, as I sent the news out to a few cousins on the Eastern seaboard who want to join the mission, to see the letters and photos and hear my story of Nellie, as she (my grandmother) and I were born from the same geographic soil. I can feel her pulse.

I am inspired to expand my musical knowledge from the confine of three strumming chords to the picking fluidity of the Delta Blues and to write Nellie's song on my new Guitar... a work of art. 

 

 

It is at is a "limited-release Gretsch 9202 Honey Dipper Special... round-neck resonator guitar, with all the same features as the wildly popular G9201 Honey Dipper Special, with the addition of aged white fingerboard binding, screened headstockgraphic and a weathered "Delta Blue" finish                                                                                   ,, with the

This guitar is far, far above my class. I have to forcefully supress the terror it brings to me. But, when I hold that solid brass acoustic body against me and strum it... the vibrations resonate right through to my back bone, into my entire body, as sound resonates into one ears. It seduces me. Today, I bought a blues lesson CD. The challenge is in my hands.

I may have to call her Honey Dipper  or Blue Nellie!  Whataya think?

Okay, I am heading out to Galveston to do as I promised in a previous blog... to photograph that magnificent statue of the "heroines" of the Texas revolution and to learn their story in the forming and shaping of the United States of America ?
  

I'll be right back .