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Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band
Concert Review
November 28th, 2012, Portland, OR.
By Leif Jackson Bullock
From the beginning of the show, Springsteen oozes with sweat. He probably began perspiring before the concert began. (see “Bruce Springsteen spotted working out in Pearl working out in Pearl,” http://www.kgw.com/news/local/Bruce-Springsteen-gets-workout-in-Portland-181222931.html)
Soaking in his own juices, he tells us he’s old. After “No Surrender” followed a heroic opener, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” he tells us he’s doing music because “I want to keep my job…I like my job.” Appreciation for his fortune and fame. Empathy for others’ emotions. Embrace of hard work, struggle, dealing with loss. In voicing these fail-safe Bruce themes, the performer quashes any grungy antipathy toward cocky rock stars and ticket prices that may lurk within the Garden. Tried-and-true gestures of humility draw upon our belief, susceptibility, and vulnerability. In other words, “We take Care of Our Own.”
Tepid, distracted crowds are reserved for performers who don’t devote spoken word tributes and moments of silence to lost loved ones, who don’t invite children on stage to sing and dance, who don’t take requests, who don’t forego any breaks in their shows lasting longer than 15 seconds. Springsteen’s Rose Garden crowd roars louder than any of the many euphoric Blazers moments I’ve witnessed. “Bruuuce” calls are as if every fan decides to somehow approvingly boo an official or player as loud as they can.
While verbally calling attention to pain and death, Bruce’s body spends the length of an American pro football game channeling god swagger. Feet-apart power stances and open-chest gesticulations; he imitates the handful of pop megastars and athletes for whom summoning screaming arenas is a daily thing.
For Bruce, it is a humble choice to devote his audience’s time and vibes toward honoring friends, family who have passed away. His stage presence certainly suggests he can just as capably rouse his subjects into calling for blood-and-flesh resurrection of the dead.
Bruce sees the non-zombie population needs a good rousing. “After we’re done here tonight, your back will hurt, feet will feel sore, and your sexual organs WILL BE STIMULATED.” And lest the burly, arm-around-wife, gay marriage opponent type of men in attendance refuse to stand on account of a fear that Bruce making them excited will transform them into tight-jean ogling homo-groupies, a dozen women storm the stage dancing in “Lesbians Heart Bruce” t-shirts. As if to say, “hey, if women who are only attracted women dig Bruce, men who are only attracted women can surely dig Bruce.”
Springsteen brings expert charisma, savvy stage symbolism and sustained desire to evoke nostalgia and awe through singing and shouting words to a somewhat introverted town. But his presence alone does not hold the crowd for three plus hours. People would be ditching a solo Bruce 70 minutes in, thinking, “I got the message…I’m gone. I like ___ music more anyway.” Without a massively appealing sound that modern electricity can guide into every visible and invisible hearing orifice the brain and soul allow, Springsteen shrinks in eyes of many who see him for his caricature. His subject-position as elderly, white, classic rock male with long, pretentious songs about hard, blue-collar work he’s never actually done invite parody and hater-dom.
But his band provides key ingredients for transcendence in a town of losers.
As “Land of Hope and Dreams” seemed to wind down, a backup singer approached Bruce and helped him belt the first lines of a Curtis Mayfield/Bob Marley-pitched “People get ready, there’s a train a comin / ya don’t need no baggage / ya just get on board.” Throughout the night, other such homage to different traditions and genres permeate.
When Springsteen is not killing the SM-58-sounding mic with a delivery that matches or exceeds his emotional clarity on record, he turns into a bodylanguage/spokenword bit player, while some or all of the 19 band performers creep to the center of the stage with their playing stuck on party groove symphony mode. An equal or greater number of sound-sculptors operate off-stage in a technology pod encircled with at least a dozen computer monitors. Additionally, mattress-sized soundboards on either side of stage with p. a. controls to further vet outgoing, probiotic rock-and-roll microbes.
I cannot name a song that fell flat, or a particular number that soared above the rest. E street has mastered them all equally. The band does so by sauntering back and forth through several different styles—often within the same setlist “song.” I witness orchestral, choral mastery of a “my city of ruins/spirit in the night” extended re-write (A 2002 hit paired with a 1973 time stopper). This stretch of sound shifts from solo-acoustic guitar playing and howling, to full-fledged symphonic band bombast, back to 3-4 instruments rocking garage-hard, into funky dance mode, outer space reverb via female soprano holding a high note, and back to another, album-sounding verse, all without an audible or visible break in the tune.
What particularly impresses me—as someone who loves listening to older Bruce albums like Born to Run, The River, Nebraska, Born in the USA, Tunnel of Love, and who tends to cue up Bruce albums such as Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils and Dust that lack the E street band—is how both the band and audience find something special in singing the songs written in the past decade. It’s not just flashback nostalgia with Bruce on stage. Relevant, youthful, political vibes are getting unearthed and negotiated. If one is looking to study pop music’s imprint on unfolding culture, a topical approach will lead them to a Bruce show just as justifiably as it would to Lady Gaga, Drake, Kanye, et al.
My taste in Springsteen’s catalogue belongs to a minority, compared with that of audience on hand and the live performers on stage. When songs from “The Rising” and “Wrecking Ball” begin, the crowd approves as vocally as they do for the “Thunder Road/Born to Run” encore. It’s easy to see the faces of lead singer and band convulse with emotion as they feel their way through the newer stuff. Goosebumps echo across aisles like an entranced preacher who senses a prayer is touching the congregation.
I enjoy discovering that 2002’s “The Rising” album is on par with any other Bruce record. Nothing quite like finding awesome and new in what you think is just awesome and old.
Hearing “Rising” songs live, it’s really obvious they make a lasting impact on listeners, just as Springsteen albums have in decades past. The lyrics help simplify substance: what 21st century life feels like at home, when all that is home also a mere outgrowth of global connections and fissures. Such a sweeping scope of thought parleyed into music is a tough assignment, a task many performers shelve as they work to congeal a local or commercial niche, often with beautiful results. But Big Picture Rock gets an arena-sized swath of humanity to demonstrate, prove to me that my preferences and inclinations are at the mercy of everyone else’s.
A concert like Springsteen’s gives assurance that the standing masses can couple intellect with euphoria.
Setlist
1. Land of Hope & Dreams
2. No Surrender
3. Hungry Hear
4. We Take Care Of Our Own
5. Wrecking Ball
6. Death To My Hometown
7. My City Of Ruins
8. Spirit In The Night
9. Loose Ends (sign request: Spinner style, landed on “Steve’s Choice”)
10. Growin’ Up (sign request)
11. Jack Of All Trades
12. Seeds
13. Johnny 99
14. Darlington County
15. Shackled & Drawn
16. Waitin’ On A Sunny Day
17. Drive All Night
18. The Rising
19. Badlands
20. Thunder Road
Encore:
21. If I Should Fall Behind
22. Born To Run
23. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
24. Dancing In The Dark
25. Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
26. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Friday, November 30, 2012
Friday, October 7, 2011
Opening Day of Fall Protest Season
Portland, OR – Ankeny and Waterfront – Thursday, October 7, 2011
Our turn.
Cheers to the New Yorkers who got the domestic occupation movement rolling. Hats off to D.C., N.C., and Chicago for carrying the ball further.
Now, we on the West Coast shall see it through. Granted, our heads are often in the clouds. We breathe the cleaner air, drink the clearer water, brew the better beer. Perhaps as a result, we’re a little slow on the expression of outrage compared to East Coasters in closer proximity to the now-contested political power centers in this country. But followers of recent U.S. protest history know that when we do decide to protest, we tend to go all in. Examples include WTO protest in Seattle 1999, Anti-war marches in Portland 2002, Longview 2011, Eugene all the time, Earth First, E.L.F. When the hard-core agitators, persistent peace protruders, and freaky-weird dresser-uppers converge, as they have today, such a critical mass invites analytical task. Here’s what I observed in the 90 minutes I attended before I had work:
12:15pm – Hundreds of people are quickly turning to thousands, filling and spilling over the concrete bowl of steps where a couple of megaphones lead call-and-repeat messages. The scene resembles a huge 2nd grade classroom. Everyone is trying to get each other to be quiet and listen to directions.
A small group of committed-looking protesters, donning earth tone ponchos and hair suited for a hunkering down in an occupied hibernation, seizes the megaphones every few minutes to reiterate that everyone should act responsibly, keep their hands to themselves, save their loudest outdoor voices for later on, and to stay hydrated.
Those that use the megaphones slowly instruct those who can hear them to repeat what they are saying, then repeat it once more, until people out of megaphone earshot can get the messages. This method of communication quickly makes people aware of peacekeeper volunteers, police liaisons, and a lawyer hotline to call in case of arrests. It also voices, to an uplifting effect, peoples’ personal testimonials. Lines form behind the megaphones as folks wait their turn to share stories and insights; words that are repeated by everyone else. An ongoing pledge of allegiance to the spirit of cooperation, enabling a successful occupation.
I paraphrase some of the highlights:
A young man dressed in moss-colored, military-style jacket takes the mic. Oh great, I think, another Che Guevara-wannabe thinking he’s gonna spark a guerrilla movement during a lunch break in SW Portland after he gets done yelling at his unemployed stoner friends and middle-aged white people in attendance. Turns out he is an Iraq War Vet, 4 tours, has a buddy who lost an arm, another who took his own life. He thought he has no voice until today. My lingering cynicism evaporates.
A short, serious-faced, women with glasses has volunteered in health clinics for 11 years and has never seen conditions as bad as they are now.
A grey-haired man says he can’t believe he’s still fucking protesting this shit. Been at it since the 60’s. They didn’t listen to him. Now Wall St. has screwed his grandkids.
A not-quite-totally-grey haired man says he’s been a part of many protest movements. In his experience, they are most successful when those protesting are having fun. He would like to make a fairly controversial suggestion that in the event arrests do begin to occur, that everyone imitate a notorious group of Portland cyclists: get naked.
1:00 pm – Some additional circles form around the bigger circle of people. They have drums, chanting, and megaphones spouting alternative causes at their centers.
1;15 pm – Before leaving, I take stalk of some of the movement’s signs. I divide them into loose categories, allowing us to further glean what this movement’s essential messages, if any, are, or will become:
Category 1: Blunt Dissatisfaction with Banking and Taxes
Pay Taxes, Bank Of America Doesn’t
Wells Fargo Stole My Grandma’s Farm
Jail The Banksters
Pay Your Taxes! Duh
Who Caused the Recession? The Federal Reserve
End the Fed
Category 2: Unabashed Anger at Powers That Be
Neuter Fat Cats
Too Big To Jail?: Perp Wall St.
Mad as Hell
[Around a girl’s neck] This is what Broken Trust looks like
Eat the Rich
Sacrifice the Rich
If I stole 50% of your 401k, I’d be in Jail
Category 3: Presidential Campaign Sound Bite Satire
Corporations Are Not People Until Rick Perry Executes One
It’s the Greed, Stupid
Wall St. is a Ponzi Scheme
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For
Category 4: Making Historical Parallels
Feudal Prince Pay You’re Share
Serfs Awake!
This is What a Feudal Society Looks Like
Predatory Lending=Modern Colonialism
Legislatures, Won’t You Be My Robin Hood?
I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those that do – West Point Honor Code
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. – MLK
Category 5: Keeping Portland Weird
Go Beyond Capitalism: Investigate Resource-Based Economy
[Over a rebel insignia from Star Wars] I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing
Stop Funding Israeli Apartheid
Al-Qaeda is C.I.A.
Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters
Gross National Happiness
Category 6: Proving Portlanders can be Creative and Clever
Make Signs
It’s More Fun To Share
Make Jobs, Not War
The Revolution will Not be Privatized
If This Is The American Dream, It’s Time to Wake Up
Industrial Capitalism: Drop it Like It’s Hot
Too Big to Fail is Too Dumb to Work
Category 7: Requests for Moderate Reforms
Enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Pass the American Jobs Act
Good Jobs come with Unions and Laws, not Generosity of Employers
Labor Creates Wealth
Don’t be fools / Give Money to Schools
Give Me a Job
Close the Loopholes
Bring Back the Middle Class
Tax the Rich
Our turn.
Cheers to the New Yorkers who got the domestic occupation movement rolling. Hats off to D.C., N.C., and Chicago for carrying the ball further.
Now, we on the West Coast shall see it through. Granted, our heads are often in the clouds. We breathe the cleaner air, drink the clearer water, brew the better beer. Perhaps as a result, we’re a little slow on the expression of outrage compared to East Coasters in closer proximity to the now-contested political power centers in this country. But followers of recent U.S. protest history know that when we do decide to protest, we tend to go all in. Examples include WTO protest in Seattle 1999, Anti-war marches in Portland 2002, Longview 2011, Eugene all the time, Earth First, E.L.F. When the hard-core agitators, persistent peace protruders, and freaky-weird dresser-uppers converge, as they have today, such a critical mass invites analytical task. Here’s what I observed in the 90 minutes I attended before I had work:
12:15pm – Hundreds of people are quickly turning to thousands, filling and spilling over the concrete bowl of steps where a couple of megaphones lead call-and-repeat messages. The scene resembles a huge 2nd grade classroom. Everyone is trying to get each other to be quiet and listen to directions.
A small group of committed-looking protesters, donning earth tone ponchos and hair suited for a hunkering down in an occupied hibernation, seizes the megaphones every few minutes to reiterate that everyone should act responsibly, keep their hands to themselves, save their loudest outdoor voices for later on, and to stay hydrated.
Those that use the megaphones slowly instruct those who can hear them to repeat what they are saying, then repeat it once more, until people out of megaphone earshot can get the messages. This method of communication quickly makes people aware of peacekeeper volunteers, police liaisons, and a lawyer hotline to call in case of arrests. It also voices, to an uplifting effect, peoples’ personal testimonials. Lines form behind the megaphones as folks wait their turn to share stories and insights; words that are repeated by everyone else. An ongoing pledge of allegiance to the spirit of cooperation, enabling a successful occupation.
I paraphrase some of the highlights:
A young man dressed in moss-colored, military-style jacket takes the mic. Oh great, I think, another Che Guevara-wannabe thinking he’s gonna spark a guerrilla movement during a lunch break in SW Portland after he gets done yelling at his unemployed stoner friends and middle-aged white people in attendance. Turns out he is an Iraq War Vet, 4 tours, has a buddy who lost an arm, another who took his own life. He thought he has no voice until today. My lingering cynicism evaporates.
A short, serious-faced, women with glasses has volunteered in health clinics for 11 years and has never seen conditions as bad as they are now.
A grey-haired man says he can’t believe he’s still fucking protesting this shit. Been at it since the 60’s. They didn’t listen to him. Now Wall St. has screwed his grandkids.
A not-quite-totally-grey haired man says he’s been a part of many protest movements. In his experience, they are most successful when those protesting are having fun. He would like to make a fairly controversial suggestion that in the event arrests do begin to occur, that everyone imitate a notorious group of Portland cyclists: get naked.
1:00 pm – Some additional circles form around the bigger circle of people. They have drums, chanting, and megaphones spouting alternative causes at their centers.
1;15 pm – Before leaving, I take stalk of some of the movement’s signs. I divide them into loose categories, allowing us to further glean what this movement’s essential messages, if any, are, or will become:
Category 1: Blunt Dissatisfaction with Banking and Taxes
Pay Taxes, Bank Of America Doesn’t
Wells Fargo Stole My Grandma’s Farm
Jail The Banksters
Pay Your Taxes! Duh
Who Caused the Recession? The Federal Reserve
End the Fed
Category 2: Unabashed Anger at Powers That Be
Neuter Fat Cats
Too Big To Jail?: Perp Wall St.
Mad as Hell
[Around a girl’s neck] This is what Broken Trust looks like
Eat the Rich
Sacrifice the Rich
If I stole 50% of your 401k, I’d be in Jail
Category 3: Presidential Campaign Sound Bite Satire
Corporations Are Not People Until Rick Perry Executes One
It’s the Greed, Stupid
Wall St. is a Ponzi Scheme
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For
Category 4: Making Historical Parallels
Feudal Prince Pay You’re Share
Serfs Awake!
This is What a Feudal Society Looks Like
Predatory Lending=Modern Colonialism
Legislatures, Won’t You Be My Robin Hood?
I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those that do – West Point Honor Code
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. – MLK
Category 5: Keeping Portland Weird
Go Beyond Capitalism: Investigate Resource-Based Economy
[Over a rebel insignia from Star Wars] I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing
Stop Funding Israeli Apartheid
Al-Qaeda is C.I.A.
Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters
Gross National Happiness
Category 6: Proving Portlanders can be Creative and Clever
Make Signs
It’s More Fun To Share
Make Jobs, Not War
The Revolution will Not be Privatized
If This Is The American Dream, It’s Time to Wake Up
Industrial Capitalism: Drop it Like It’s Hot
Too Big to Fail is Too Dumb to Work
Category 7: Requests for Moderate Reforms
Enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Pass the American Jobs Act
Good Jobs come with Unions and Laws, not Generosity of Employers
Labor Creates Wealth
Don’t be fools / Give Money to Schools
Give Me a Job
Close the Loopholes
Bring Back the Middle Class
Tax the Rich
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Blogging Burning Man 2011: A Swahili Perspective
Burning Man, Day 1:
Uncle Jimmy, new friends Dan and Esther from Las Vegas, and I, drove into a fog of dust 3pm, Monday. As we exited the paved, two-lane highway north of Gerlach, NV, we joined a caravan of thousands of vehicles from thousands of cities.
As pavement gave way to seven loosely marked lanes of white, alkaline, “caulk” surface, the impending spectacle of Burning Man took on an unmistakably immediate presence. The months, years of planning, waffling on whether or not I could go, and speculation about what Burning Man is, were over.
A series of signs that gradually read the lyrics of ‘Amazing Grace’ appeared to our right. Miles of white desert to our left, and to our right. Traffic stopped, then inched along in 5-40 minute intervals for the next six hours. Nairobi, Kenya and Kampala, Uganda aside, this was the thickest gridlock I’d ever seen. And all around us, people were having the time of their lives.
As we took turns leaving our rig to walk up and down the jam, we found dance parties near speakers playing the full spectrum of party music. Friends toasted, made plans for the week, theorized life plans. We owned up to rhetoric that instructs one to live in the moment. By 5pm Monday, we exuded patience, exchanging contented laughter and stuff to cover our faces from dust clouds. The mood could not be further from a Monday afternoon ‘rush hour’ jam in Any City, USA.
After dark, we graduated from the line, surrendered the stubs of our tickets, thanked the Greeters, and broke camp. After midnight, my uncle and I biked to the center of camp: the Esplanade. The setting made me feel like a child. As far as I could see, indescribably striking art filled the space. Sound came from every direction and pitch. People walked as art. Boats floated on the desert, coming and going from an ocean-sized pier. I had never seen art before. Every person we found was the ‘chill’ person at a house party that you wish everyone could be like, that you wish you could be more like.
Reenactment of the Lousiana Purchase Through Interpretive Dance:
The “Yum” camp brought together 25 odd dancer-historians, including myself, for a performance that began each time the narrator, dressed only in crotch-revealing tights patterned after the American flag, said into a megaphone: “The year is 1803, the City is New Orleans—a site of intense political maneuvering between the French, Spanish, and Americans—and a hotbed of fornication” [cue boom box].
I arrived late the to the pre-enactment briefing, even by Burning Man standards, and was originally assigned no role outside of that of the dancing chorus. Fortunately, my uncle gifted a bunch of Mardi Gras beads around my neck just beforehand. After the narrator’s opening line, I kicked up a dust cloud with tiny, furiously fast steps, continuing the rapid energy up my body, crashing the beads against each other and off of my chest. Fellow re-enactors began to notice and appreciate the gesture, adding their own interpretative reactions to my action as the play’s run wore on. In our one hour season, we did seven shows, each at a different venue, each to the surprise of adoring audiences.
My providing of the New Orleans-themed prop sparked behind-the-back criticism of Greg, the narrator, among a fraction of the cast. “Couldn’t he have gotten some props? How hard is it to get a wig?” “It’s a stretch to cast Napolean, Jefferson, and the leaders of the Haitian Revolution all as flaming homosexuals.”
When asked by them what I would do to improve the interpretation, I suggested we do a reenactment of the forming of the reenactment of the Lousisiana Purchase.
That would confuse the hell of the audience, they said. But we’d make a sound theoretical point on their asses, I said. Ah, you’re an appreciator of historiography, they said. I hugged them, elated that they knew about historiography.
The next day, the same group shocked audiences by napping as a flash mob. I refrained, taking a pre-announced, solitary nap inside our tent with my uncle.
What is Burning Man?
Burning Man is the biggest, baddest, most epic camping trip, art show, freak show, music festival, dance party, and a host of other event genres assigned to large, annual, voluntary gatherings.
It’s for people that GET the value of hanging out, that know how to party.
When you show up a house party, club, bar outside Burning Man, you find many people unsuited for an enjoyable, enriching, or empowering bout of partying. This probably happens for a ton of reasons, many of which the unsuited partiers can hardly be blamed for falling victim to.
The following characteristics are frequently displayed by people outside Burning Man:
- Stiffness. At base, an unwillingness to loosen oneself. The mind remains inflexible, rendering speech that leads conversation toward predictable, ignorant, unoriginal, dismissive dead ends. The body refuses to move in ways beyond those required for formal greetings and entirely practical, utilitarian tasks.
- Being overly judgemental. People do like I just wrote in the above section addressing stiffness, but to a greater, ingratiatingly unceasing degree. You show up to a party hoping to catch wind of some uplifting piece of mind, bust some jokes, get hip to new, fresh jive, and instead end up listening to a bunch of people putting other people down. Particularly disheartening is when they express outrage or snooty, feaux-astonishment at people drinking, taking other drugs, at parties.
- Wasted belligerence. Despite being judged harshly for it, or because of such judging, people tend to get too drunk, high, stoned, blitzed, soused, crocked, etc., at parties. You often can’t endorse any perceivable merits of a party without being chastised or guilted for maintaining an eloquent, sober-sounding coherence. Too many people equate a high drug intake with having a good time. Either that or you end up unable to shake off someone(s) who tries to warn you against the perils the drugs, all the while giving you, by their current, inebriated existence, an ample demonstration of alcoholism’s (or less popular narcotics’) downsides. Particularly in many areas within the U.S. the same problem with drugs has applied to eating unhealthy food in recent years.
- Obsession with networking and money. When you finally run across some people with a proper attitude toward drugs, they prefer to spend their time away from work and managing finances to discuss, exclusively, work and the management of finances.
- Obsession with sex, ‘hookups,’ and dating. People instantly express extreme disinterest in a party if they fell their chances of getting with someone else are minimal. If they chilled out, perhaps they would find it easier not to feel so lonely, sexually frustrated, or whatever else is bringing out too much of their predatorial side. Granted, A certain amount of sleazy folk are perhaps unavoidable. The most intelligent, talented historians have been unable to find an era in which raging parties did not feature at least some of them. 21st Century Portlanders often term them “sketchers” and “skeezers.”
- Intimacy with phones. You find those who spend the entire party calling, answering, texting, surfing the web, and taking photos that have already been taken millions of times.
I know I’ve been as guilty as anyone, at one time or another, of all the aforementioned habits that debilitate partying. But I also know there are a few, and occasionally more than a few, people who GET the party. I’ve been blessed to meet them at parties and am proud to call some of them friends. They exude the coolness, the chill resonance, the admirable compassion, the inspiring creativity, or however else you define the stuff that makes you happy to be around.
The people who get partying might take a little drugs, or more than a little. Or they won’t. Either way, their choices clear, rather than clutter, the mood of the party. They dance, or move, hug, in ways that show a warmth all humans are capable of and responsible for sharing. They take an interest in what others are doing, unafraid to engage in self-deprecation or the playful mocking of others.
They are mainly into two things: Enjoying the moment, relaxing themselves, and/or trying to inspire the same in others. They’re not averse to strangers, to supposedly “awkward” moments, to being close to another person they haven’t already met or think they have entirely figured out.
Burning Man is a huge swath of parties, organized as a one, week-long party, in which the Vast Majority of people are segment of cool people you find at parties across the world. Many tell me that Burning Man, to them, is something that somehow transforms them. This resonates, since it implies that the event turns you into the chill partier. It scrubs off the parts of you that constrain partying.
How I’ve Grown To Further Appreciate House, Techno, Trance, and Dub Step
Electronic music makes sense in the times we live in. We work with computers, we struggle with them, we depend upon them, we love them, we hate them. Most us of us hear phones, generators, combustible engines, planes—most of which now heavily involve computers—all day long. At night, when we can find some free time, it then follows that we try to manipulate the noises of the computers for our own enjoyment. Computers annoy us for hours when we work. They can entertain us too, but in ways that television and books do. Unless they are used as instruments. Once we are able to compose with computers, we use computers like blues players use guitars and vocals. They make us dance, love, freak out, black out, contemplate, and feel belonging to an intimate collectivity of humanity. DJs—Electronic Performers—are the current vanguard of the computer music movement, one whose precise origins must be found in the nebulous that conceived the DNA of Kraftwerk and Hendrix. Computers portray both the raw, primal, grinding of powerful, amped-up folk traditions, and mathematically precise, technical wizardry. The genre’s reliance on expensive equipment (which has grown cheaper over time) is evocative of classical music movements that reached their zeniths in pre-Industrial Revolution European scenes. But electronic music, for the most part, dispenses with elitist pretense. In the electronic music scene, it isn’t frowned upon to leave during the middle of a really long song.
I have grown to dig electronic music over time, and have embraced it far more reluctantly than genres like rock, hip-hop, reggae, disco, drumming, and others. I have joined those who critique the music as being robotic; lifeless in that it lacks the performative panache of awesome vocal or guitar-driven bands. But DJs can perform too, and, as the Infected Mushroom concert at Burning Man demonstrated, can kill the mike like a talented, Luddite lounge singer.
Human passion is so unmistakably evident when people seen are on stage or heard on record as living, playing proof of why music makes life worth living. I’ve realized that perhaps we’ve left computers to manage life to such a degree that to exclude them from playing a more integral role in music is to engage in antiquated music.
No other festival, to my knowledge, is as big as Burning Man in terms of duration, volume, and originality. Electronic music overwhelmingly dominates the Burning Man soundscape. No other musical movement can claim such a motherboard of shows, huge crowds, and ‘big name’ acts. It operates largely without hierarchy and is explicitly free of corporate sponsorship. In terms of organic authenticacy, Burning Man strikes me as an annual gathering on par with the Woodstock/Altamont/Festival Express history. But unlike sound of that era—English language rock and roll—electronic music is far less constrained by language barriers.
An Example of Originality at Burning Man 2011: The Redneck Posse of Flamedancers
At the entrance to a bar-themed camp emphasizing its old-timey, Western Cowboy tendencies, I stumbled across a man twirling and tossing two sticks with fires on their ends. Around him, two other men, also shirtless with carhart jeans, cowboy boots and hats, stared out at the crowd, periodically taking emphatic, small steps and blasting torches that one uses during ‘initial attack,’ wildland firefighting. On four sides of them, mounted speakers blasted country music so that the constant droning of electronic music and night wailing could scarcely be heard when standing close to them. But nobody was standing too close to them, because half a dozen signs saying things along the lines of NO TRESPASSING, DO NOT STEP PAST HERE, TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED also adorned the area. The country music was not of the Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash variety. It was of the “I get off on 57 Chevys / she thinks my tractor’s sexy / I hunt with dogs” variety. Cotemporary FM country. The redneck doing the firetossing mouthed the words to the songs as he focused on completing his firedances, ones rich in upper body movement. Hundreds of other firedancers performed at Burning Man. They tended to wear tie-die, or nothing, and wouldn’t dare put of a sign that didn’t frame its message in positive language. But none of them I saw tossed fire with quite the same chainsaw-revving zeal that this guy did.
Waiting for the Friday Burn:
I have waited more than two hours to be in the front row for the burning of a mansion-sized, glow-in-the-dark Trojan horse. About 30-50 yds between the horse and encircling crowd iarea few chaperones in fire suits, many volunteering to promote fire safety. They sport a variety of soldier/guard outfis: gay cop, Mrs. Officer, Spartan warrior, etc. It is easy to walk into this inner circle, but common sense prevented the vast majority of us from doing so. Occasionaly, someone went in, but they were in no condition to run, or walk, wihotut the aid of another’s arms or shoulders after a few paces.
After about 5-10 rows of people waiting for the burn is a ring of desert ships—motor vehicles decorated as boats, spaceships, playgrounds, other imaginable and unimaginable “rites of passage” carriers—parked almost wall to wall. They resemble the circling of wagons. Most blast speakers, with a squishy mob of dancers tailgating in front. It’s a campfire gathering that doubles as downtown Black Rock City on Friday Night. Each car contributes to the variety of colors and types of music—Heart Deco, Discoland, Disorient (which has a megaphone instructing people to climb on board and taxi to the gigantic electronic music club with the same name after the burn). One could poke their way through the assortment of clubs, sample of scores of nightlife, and be back standing where they were 30 minutes ago. City planning at its fleetingly finest. Not the time or place for drum circles.
The Friday Burn:
The hottest, brightest, most spectacular display of fire I’ve seen—this includes movies, the only medium that can remotely capture such flammability. This includes entire full grown trees catching on fire, witnessed when controlled doing controlled burns as a firefighter.
The burn was a feat of engineering. Fireworks shot out of it. Sparks flew in every direction, but from very high in the air. Less flammable wood pillars preserved a skeleton of a horse after siding boards lit, crashed and smoldered on the ground / slabs of exterior grew to coals in a mound / roasting the faces of those all around. When the foundations finally did fall, the horse’s ass and hind legs fell into its body and were instantly propped up by a single stick of wood that originally fastening the head. The stick did not look much thicker than a 2 X4, yet it held nearly half the horse for several minutes. It fell at an angle just before the ass did, braced in a pile of fresher coals. Eventually, it all collapsed into a single bonfire. The art and music boats set sail, and drum circles crept near the flames.
Uncle Jimmy, new friends Dan and Esther from Las Vegas, and I, drove into a fog of dust 3pm, Monday. As we exited the paved, two-lane highway north of Gerlach, NV, we joined a caravan of thousands of vehicles from thousands of cities.
As pavement gave way to seven loosely marked lanes of white, alkaline, “caulk” surface, the impending spectacle of Burning Man took on an unmistakably immediate presence. The months, years of planning, waffling on whether or not I could go, and speculation about what Burning Man is, were over.
A series of signs that gradually read the lyrics of ‘Amazing Grace’ appeared to our right. Miles of white desert to our left, and to our right. Traffic stopped, then inched along in 5-40 minute intervals for the next six hours. Nairobi, Kenya and Kampala, Uganda aside, this was the thickest gridlock I’d ever seen. And all around us, people were having the time of their lives.
As we took turns leaving our rig to walk up and down the jam, we found dance parties near speakers playing the full spectrum of party music. Friends toasted, made plans for the week, theorized life plans. We owned up to rhetoric that instructs one to live in the moment. By 5pm Monday, we exuded patience, exchanging contented laughter and stuff to cover our faces from dust clouds. The mood could not be further from a Monday afternoon ‘rush hour’ jam in Any City, USA.
After dark, we graduated from the line, surrendered the stubs of our tickets, thanked the Greeters, and broke camp. After midnight, my uncle and I biked to the center of camp: the Esplanade. The setting made me feel like a child. As far as I could see, indescribably striking art filled the space. Sound came from every direction and pitch. People walked as art. Boats floated on the desert, coming and going from an ocean-sized pier. I had never seen art before. Every person we found was the ‘chill’ person at a house party that you wish everyone could be like, that you wish you could be more like.
Reenactment of the Lousiana Purchase Through Interpretive Dance:
The “Yum” camp brought together 25 odd dancer-historians, including myself, for a performance that began each time the narrator, dressed only in crotch-revealing tights patterned after the American flag, said into a megaphone: “The year is 1803, the City is New Orleans—a site of intense political maneuvering between the French, Spanish, and Americans—and a hotbed of fornication” [cue boom box].
I arrived late the to the pre-enactment briefing, even by Burning Man standards, and was originally assigned no role outside of that of the dancing chorus. Fortunately, my uncle gifted a bunch of Mardi Gras beads around my neck just beforehand. After the narrator’s opening line, I kicked up a dust cloud with tiny, furiously fast steps, continuing the rapid energy up my body, crashing the beads against each other and off of my chest. Fellow re-enactors began to notice and appreciate the gesture, adding their own interpretative reactions to my action as the play’s run wore on. In our one hour season, we did seven shows, each at a different venue, each to the surprise of adoring audiences.
My providing of the New Orleans-themed prop sparked behind-the-back criticism of Greg, the narrator, among a fraction of the cast. “Couldn’t he have gotten some props? How hard is it to get a wig?” “It’s a stretch to cast Napolean, Jefferson, and the leaders of the Haitian Revolution all as flaming homosexuals.”
When asked by them what I would do to improve the interpretation, I suggested we do a reenactment of the forming of the reenactment of the Lousisiana Purchase.
That would confuse the hell of the audience, they said. But we’d make a sound theoretical point on their asses, I said. Ah, you’re an appreciator of historiography, they said. I hugged them, elated that they knew about historiography.
The next day, the same group shocked audiences by napping as a flash mob. I refrained, taking a pre-announced, solitary nap inside our tent with my uncle.
What is Burning Man?
Burning Man is the biggest, baddest, most epic camping trip, art show, freak show, music festival, dance party, and a host of other event genres assigned to large, annual, voluntary gatherings.
It’s for people that GET the value of hanging out, that know how to party.
When you show up a house party, club, bar outside Burning Man, you find many people unsuited for an enjoyable, enriching, or empowering bout of partying. This probably happens for a ton of reasons, many of which the unsuited partiers can hardly be blamed for falling victim to.
The following characteristics are frequently displayed by people outside Burning Man:
- Stiffness. At base, an unwillingness to loosen oneself. The mind remains inflexible, rendering speech that leads conversation toward predictable, ignorant, unoriginal, dismissive dead ends. The body refuses to move in ways beyond those required for formal greetings and entirely practical, utilitarian tasks.
- Being overly judgemental. People do like I just wrote in the above section addressing stiffness, but to a greater, ingratiatingly unceasing degree. You show up to a party hoping to catch wind of some uplifting piece of mind, bust some jokes, get hip to new, fresh jive, and instead end up listening to a bunch of people putting other people down. Particularly disheartening is when they express outrage or snooty, feaux-astonishment at people drinking, taking other drugs, at parties.
- Wasted belligerence. Despite being judged harshly for it, or because of such judging, people tend to get too drunk, high, stoned, blitzed, soused, crocked, etc., at parties. You often can’t endorse any perceivable merits of a party without being chastised or guilted for maintaining an eloquent, sober-sounding coherence. Too many people equate a high drug intake with having a good time. Either that or you end up unable to shake off someone(s) who tries to warn you against the perils the drugs, all the while giving you, by their current, inebriated existence, an ample demonstration of alcoholism’s (or less popular narcotics’) downsides. Particularly in many areas within the U.S. the same problem with drugs has applied to eating unhealthy food in recent years.
- Obsession with networking and money. When you finally run across some people with a proper attitude toward drugs, they prefer to spend their time away from work and managing finances to discuss, exclusively, work and the management of finances.
- Obsession with sex, ‘hookups,’ and dating. People instantly express extreme disinterest in a party if they fell their chances of getting with someone else are minimal. If they chilled out, perhaps they would find it easier not to feel so lonely, sexually frustrated, or whatever else is bringing out too much of their predatorial side. Granted, A certain amount of sleazy folk are perhaps unavoidable. The most intelligent, talented historians have been unable to find an era in which raging parties did not feature at least some of them. 21st Century Portlanders often term them “sketchers” and “skeezers.”
- Intimacy with phones. You find those who spend the entire party calling, answering, texting, surfing the web, and taking photos that have already been taken millions of times.
I know I’ve been as guilty as anyone, at one time or another, of all the aforementioned habits that debilitate partying. But I also know there are a few, and occasionally more than a few, people who GET the party. I’ve been blessed to meet them at parties and am proud to call some of them friends. They exude the coolness, the chill resonance, the admirable compassion, the inspiring creativity, or however else you define the stuff that makes you happy to be around.
The people who get partying might take a little drugs, or more than a little. Or they won’t. Either way, their choices clear, rather than clutter, the mood of the party. They dance, or move, hug, in ways that show a warmth all humans are capable of and responsible for sharing. They take an interest in what others are doing, unafraid to engage in self-deprecation or the playful mocking of others.
They are mainly into two things: Enjoying the moment, relaxing themselves, and/or trying to inspire the same in others. They’re not averse to strangers, to supposedly “awkward” moments, to being close to another person they haven’t already met or think they have entirely figured out.
Burning Man is a huge swath of parties, organized as a one, week-long party, in which the Vast Majority of people are segment of cool people you find at parties across the world. Many tell me that Burning Man, to them, is something that somehow transforms them. This resonates, since it implies that the event turns you into the chill partier. It scrubs off the parts of you that constrain partying.
How I’ve Grown To Further Appreciate House, Techno, Trance, and Dub Step
Electronic music makes sense in the times we live in. We work with computers, we struggle with them, we depend upon them, we love them, we hate them. Most us of us hear phones, generators, combustible engines, planes—most of which now heavily involve computers—all day long. At night, when we can find some free time, it then follows that we try to manipulate the noises of the computers for our own enjoyment. Computers annoy us for hours when we work. They can entertain us too, but in ways that television and books do. Unless they are used as instruments. Once we are able to compose with computers, we use computers like blues players use guitars and vocals. They make us dance, love, freak out, black out, contemplate, and feel belonging to an intimate collectivity of humanity. DJs—Electronic Performers—are the current vanguard of the computer music movement, one whose precise origins must be found in the nebulous that conceived the DNA of Kraftwerk and Hendrix. Computers portray both the raw, primal, grinding of powerful, amped-up folk traditions, and mathematically precise, technical wizardry. The genre’s reliance on expensive equipment (which has grown cheaper over time) is evocative of classical music movements that reached their zeniths in pre-Industrial Revolution European scenes. But electronic music, for the most part, dispenses with elitist pretense. In the electronic music scene, it isn’t frowned upon to leave during the middle of a really long song.
I have grown to dig electronic music over time, and have embraced it far more reluctantly than genres like rock, hip-hop, reggae, disco, drumming, and others. I have joined those who critique the music as being robotic; lifeless in that it lacks the performative panache of awesome vocal or guitar-driven bands. But DJs can perform too, and, as the Infected Mushroom concert at Burning Man demonstrated, can kill the mike like a talented, Luddite lounge singer.
Human passion is so unmistakably evident when people seen are on stage or heard on record as living, playing proof of why music makes life worth living. I’ve realized that perhaps we’ve left computers to manage life to such a degree that to exclude them from playing a more integral role in music is to engage in antiquated music.
No other festival, to my knowledge, is as big as Burning Man in terms of duration, volume, and originality. Electronic music overwhelmingly dominates the Burning Man soundscape. No other musical movement can claim such a motherboard of shows, huge crowds, and ‘big name’ acts. It operates largely without hierarchy and is explicitly free of corporate sponsorship. In terms of organic authenticacy, Burning Man strikes me as an annual gathering on par with the Woodstock/Altamont/Festival Express history. But unlike sound of that era—English language rock and roll—electronic music is far less constrained by language barriers.
An Example of Originality at Burning Man 2011: The Redneck Posse of Flamedancers
At the entrance to a bar-themed camp emphasizing its old-timey, Western Cowboy tendencies, I stumbled across a man twirling and tossing two sticks with fires on their ends. Around him, two other men, also shirtless with carhart jeans, cowboy boots and hats, stared out at the crowd, periodically taking emphatic, small steps and blasting torches that one uses during ‘initial attack,’ wildland firefighting. On four sides of them, mounted speakers blasted country music so that the constant droning of electronic music and night wailing could scarcely be heard when standing close to them. But nobody was standing too close to them, because half a dozen signs saying things along the lines of NO TRESPASSING, DO NOT STEP PAST HERE, TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED also adorned the area. The country music was not of the Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash variety. It was of the “I get off on 57 Chevys / she thinks my tractor’s sexy / I hunt with dogs” variety. Cotemporary FM country. The redneck doing the firetossing mouthed the words to the songs as he focused on completing his firedances, ones rich in upper body movement. Hundreds of other firedancers performed at Burning Man. They tended to wear tie-die, or nothing, and wouldn’t dare put of a sign that didn’t frame its message in positive language. But none of them I saw tossed fire with quite the same chainsaw-revving zeal that this guy did.
Waiting for the Friday Burn:
I have waited more than two hours to be in the front row for the burning of a mansion-sized, glow-in-the-dark Trojan horse. About 30-50 yds between the horse and encircling crowd iarea few chaperones in fire suits, many volunteering to promote fire safety. They sport a variety of soldier/guard outfis: gay cop, Mrs. Officer, Spartan warrior, etc. It is easy to walk into this inner circle, but common sense prevented the vast majority of us from doing so. Occasionaly, someone went in, but they were in no condition to run, or walk, wihotut the aid of another’s arms or shoulders after a few paces.
After about 5-10 rows of people waiting for the burn is a ring of desert ships—motor vehicles decorated as boats, spaceships, playgrounds, other imaginable and unimaginable “rites of passage” carriers—parked almost wall to wall. They resemble the circling of wagons. Most blast speakers, with a squishy mob of dancers tailgating in front. It’s a campfire gathering that doubles as downtown Black Rock City on Friday Night. Each car contributes to the variety of colors and types of music—Heart Deco, Discoland, Disorient (which has a megaphone instructing people to climb on board and taxi to the gigantic electronic music club with the same name after the burn). One could poke their way through the assortment of clubs, sample of scores of nightlife, and be back standing where they were 30 minutes ago. City planning at its fleetingly finest. Not the time or place for drum circles.
The Friday Burn:
The hottest, brightest, most spectacular display of fire I’ve seen—this includes movies, the only medium that can remotely capture such flammability. This includes entire full grown trees catching on fire, witnessed when controlled doing controlled burns as a firefighter.
The burn was a feat of engineering. Fireworks shot out of it. Sparks flew in every direction, but from very high in the air. Less flammable wood pillars preserved a skeleton of a horse after siding boards lit, crashed and smoldered on the ground / slabs of exterior grew to coals in a mound / roasting the faces of those all around. When the foundations finally did fall, the horse’s ass and hind legs fell into its body and were instantly propped up by a single stick of wood that originally fastening the head. The stick did not look much thicker than a 2 X4, yet it held nearly half the horse for several minutes. It fell at an angle just before the ass did, braced in a pile of fresher coals. Eventually, it all collapsed into a single bonfire. The art and music boats set sail, and drum circles crept near the flames.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Ushairi wa Kiswhahili
Mashairi yatayafuata maneno machache haya. Nilitunga beti na vina zinazotumia beti za uhuru (vuni).
The following is a collection of Swahili poems I composed. The verses can be rhymed in rhythm.
--
Utaka nini?
Niko chini
Kwa sababu naimba ukweli kwa miaka ishirini
Njoo na mimi,
hata wakili
Sheria ya Kiswahili inatawala pwanini
Midundo mipoa
Tutaitoa
Mpaka mwisho wa dunia
Hatutachoka
Tazama, vijana
Twacheza na maana
Ndiyo au hapana?
Uliza mababi na mabwana
Wanakubaliana
Ushairi ni furuaha
--
naombeombe
chupa za pombe
nahitaji kuzimaliza kila siku
sikuyote
nikipata marafiki,
wananiitwa mlevi-e
nipe bia mvinyo guiness,
hata dawa za kienyej-e
sikumbuki asabuhe
ilikuwa juzi juze
na nimesahau kusemaje
kiswhahili vizure
saa yangu ni bure
sina kazi milele
nikigundua mlima pilsner
nitakuwa na RAHA…mustarehe.
--
poa kachizi
kama ndizi
ninafana na mwizi
ameyeshinda polisi
kiswhahili
hiki
sichajui
lakini
beti na mdundo
zinakuja rahisi
zinazofika usiku
ninapopata usingizi
--
hii na bahari, na sisi tulivua
hatuna magari, meli ama punda
samaki wametoraka
hatujali
twauza mitai, kawaha na sukari
ukikuja bila pesa,
huduhumu yetu ni bure,
tupe msaada
kama kusafisha vikombe
Ujumaa ulikufa?
Miaka wa sabini?
Umoja umefauua
Tangu tumeshiriki
---
(kuimba pole pole)
shida
kila asabuhi ni shida
sisi tunaamka na shida
mpaka kuna kucha ni shida
shida
bibi yangu amekuwa na mimba
mtoto yetu hatakuwa na jina
basi ninaimba na shida
shida
nimepotea pesa
mimi siwezi kueleza,
maisha wangu bila faida
shida (4x)
maisha wangu ni shida, na shida inakua
The following is a collection of Swahili poems I composed. The verses can be rhymed in rhythm.
--
Utaka nini?
Niko chini
Kwa sababu naimba ukweli kwa miaka ishirini
Njoo na mimi,
hata wakili
Sheria ya Kiswahili inatawala pwanini
Midundo mipoa
Tutaitoa
Mpaka mwisho wa dunia
Hatutachoka
Tazama, vijana
Twacheza na maana
Ndiyo au hapana?
Uliza mababi na mabwana
Wanakubaliana
Ushairi ni furuaha
--
naombeombe
chupa za pombe
nahitaji kuzimaliza kila siku
sikuyote
nikipata marafiki,
wananiitwa mlevi-e
nipe bia mvinyo guiness,
hata dawa za kienyej-e
sikumbuki asabuhe
ilikuwa juzi juze
na nimesahau kusemaje
kiswhahili vizure
saa yangu ni bure
sina kazi milele
nikigundua mlima pilsner
nitakuwa na RAHA…mustarehe.
--
poa kachizi
kama ndizi
ninafana na mwizi
ameyeshinda polisi
kiswhahili
hiki
sichajui
lakini
beti na mdundo
zinakuja rahisi
zinazofika usiku
ninapopata usingizi
--
hii na bahari, na sisi tulivua
hatuna magari, meli ama punda
samaki wametoraka
hatujali
twauza mitai, kawaha na sukari
ukikuja bila pesa,
huduhumu yetu ni bure,
tupe msaada
kama kusafisha vikombe
Ujumaa ulikufa?
Miaka wa sabini?
Umoja umefauua
Tangu tumeshiriki
---
(kuimba pole pole)
shida
kila asabuhi ni shida
sisi tunaamka na shida
mpaka kuna kucha ni shida
shida
bibi yangu amekuwa na mimba
mtoto yetu hatakuwa na jina
basi ninaimba na shida
shida
nimepotea pesa
mimi siwezi kueleza,
maisha wangu bila faida
shida (4x)
maisha wangu ni shida, na shida inakua
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Eccentric goofballs, Publicized Fiends, Complex Chillers
In the afternoons, an old, fat man props his gut at a right angle against the road and walls of the small business opposite Fort Jesus. Shirt off, mouth running like a filibuster, his words cannot be translated, the meaning behind his speech indecipherable. The universal language of bodily gestures and vocal inflections, however, suggest the muse of anger is never far from the discourse. His nighttime scrolls are reportedly written in his own language. A repository of insult and revulsion, he is somewhere between Ignatius Reilly and Charles Barkley. I plan to walk up to him during a particularly potent outburst, squat down a couple paces in front of him, and take some detailed portraits with my SmartCapture feature. I do not foresee him having the ability to stop me, nor do I expect others in the neighborhood rush to his aid. He has long since forfeited any benefits to be derived from ‘respect 4 elders’ sentiments.
Late one night, I poked around the canons outside the Fort that border the sea, hoping to find a perch suitable for singing at the ocean, away from those who sleep outside. Every spot was, is, taken, or vacated as a result of excess trash influx. But seated at a foldable table, concealed by fortress shadows, is the Somali that the others call “Boss.” The Boss says his is 20 years old, and speaks a simplified, immigrant Swahili with old eyes, eyes that give his accounts of guns and war across the border a heightened authenticity. As we talk alone, he commends the quite solitude of his miraa-chewing perch, doling out to me gradual portions of the drug-plant as I gradually articulate opinions and observations conveyable in Swahili. We explore conversation in alert relaxation. How and why police suck, that there are many poor and smart Ugandans, estimating the number of cats that prowl the street. Hours probably pass. We are not hungry, tired, or stressed; simply in the mood for some more miraa.
As our dialogue begins to finish with all insight contained in the language we can share, another man approaches. He’s older, swaying, and mumbling shouts. Boss tells me to shut my yap, lest the passing drunk gleans my northern speech rhythms and decides to become my hanger-on. My silence does not make the shadow black enough to shroud my skin. The drunk ambles over, dragging erect a lawnchair, making a small gesture toward pretending to clean dirt off his seat.
Blending Swahili and English, the drunk specialized in nailing American expressions with a Kenyan accent.
“Don’t mind me, I’m on my own high, man. I see you are young. You go your way, I go mine. That’s what I told my wife, it was very difficult.”
“Let’s get drunk, get high, I wanna get problems off of my mind!” [In Old Town, the strong Islamic element leads everyone, save for this Drunk, to publicly abstain from taking or talking of alcohol]
The Drunk rocks back on the plastic chair, smoking and chewing miraa. “Hah! I am a rich man. Look at them [hotels and fancy apartments in Nyali, visible to the North], they are paying for that. But me? I am paying nothing to enjoy myself right now.” [Turns, remembers he is next to Ft. Jesus] “This is a special place, here. If we come together, we can do something really great for the community. Gotta come together though. Brothers. [Boss nods, not bothering to inform him that the Fort is used by dozens of small tourists throughout the day, weddings, public speeches and other political ceremonies, soccer teams in the evening]
“Rain, coming, see those clouds? Definitely rain. I’m FEELIN RAIN. [sniffs air] I smell rain, you smell rain?” [it would not rain for several days]
“All my life, I’ve wondered: why am I such a loudmouth?”
Boss begins playing music off of his phone. He apparently has the audio from the extended movie version of “Thriller,” so after minutes of spoken word, and baffled, disapproval from the Drunk, the instantly recognizable “Thriller” song kicks in.
“Killin it, man. LOVE this one, great choice.” [While stroking a cat and slouching in his chair, Drunk begins to rotate his shoulders in opposite directions, his feet posing to beats. I’ve never chewed so much miraa in my life, and will never take so much again. I bid the Boss, Drunk, and cat goodnight, slip home to grab a couple hours shut-eye ‘fore sun-up]
Enduring advice I think someone said a while ago: You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don’t dance. So you might as well dance.
Late one night, I poked around the canons outside the Fort that border the sea, hoping to find a perch suitable for singing at the ocean, away from those who sleep outside. Every spot was, is, taken, or vacated as a result of excess trash influx. But seated at a foldable table, concealed by fortress shadows, is the Somali that the others call “Boss.” The Boss says his is 20 years old, and speaks a simplified, immigrant Swahili with old eyes, eyes that give his accounts of guns and war across the border a heightened authenticity. As we talk alone, he commends the quite solitude of his miraa-chewing perch, doling out to me gradual portions of the drug-plant as I gradually articulate opinions and observations conveyable in Swahili. We explore conversation in alert relaxation. How and why police suck, that there are many poor and smart Ugandans, estimating the number of cats that prowl the street. Hours probably pass. We are not hungry, tired, or stressed; simply in the mood for some more miraa.
As our dialogue begins to finish with all insight contained in the language we can share, another man approaches. He’s older, swaying, and mumbling shouts. Boss tells me to shut my yap, lest the passing drunk gleans my northern speech rhythms and decides to become my hanger-on. My silence does not make the shadow black enough to shroud my skin. The drunk ambles over, dragging erect a lawnchair, making a small gesture toward pretending to clean dirt off his seat.
Blending Swahili and English, the drunk specialized in nailing American expressions with a Kenyan accent.
“Don’t mind me, I’m on my own high, man. I see you are young. You go your way, I go mine. That’s what I told my wife, it was very difficult.”
“Let’s get drunk, get high, I wanna get problems off of my mind!” [In Old Town, the strong Islamic element leads everyone, save for this Drunk, to publicly abstain from taking or talking of alcohol]
The Drunk rocks back on the plastic chair, smoking and chewing miraa. “Hah! I am a rich man. Look at them [hotels and fancy apartments in Nyali, visible to the North], they are paying for that. But me? I am paying nothing to enjoy myself right now.” [Turns, remembers he is next to Ft. Jesus] “This is a special place, here. If we come together, we can do something really great for the community. Gotta come together though. Brothers. [Boss nods, not bothering to inform him that the Fort is used by dozens of small tourists throughout the day, weddings, public speeches and other political ceremonies, soccer teams in the evening]
“Rain, coming, see those clouds? Definitely rain. I’m FEELIN RAIN. [sniffs air] I smell rain, you smell rain?” [it would not rain for several days]
“All my life, I’ve wondered: why am I such a loudmouth?”
Boss begins playing music off of his phone. He apparently has the audio from the extended movie version of “Thriller,” so after minutes of spoken word, and baffled, disapproval from the Drunk, the instantly recognizable “Thriller” song kicks in.
“Killin it, man. LOVE this one, great choice.” [While stroking a cat and slouching in his chair, Drunk begins to rotate his shoulders in opposite directions, his feet posing to beats. I’ve never chewed so much miraa in my life, and will never take so much again. I bid the Boss, Drunk, and cat goodnight, slip home to grab a couple hours shut-eye ‘fore sun-up]
Enduring advice I think someone said a while ago: You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don’t dance. So you might as well dance.
Indictment, Appreciation of The Game Park Safari
Tsavo and Amboseli reserves: Where privileged white folks used to shoot animals with bullets and drink liquor in the morning during colonial times, privileged white folks shoot animals with cameras and drink coffee, or liquor, in the morning during post-colonial times. In both cases, the idea of physically taking something away from the natural habitat prevails. Little effort is made to enjoy the land without the crutch of material aids. The need to accomplish something tangible, to prove something to others up North, is at the crux of game park safari. Thoughtful analysis or meditation with wildlife or people remains peripheral. I am not the first to stumble upon this revelation, nor would I be the first to endorse a variety of “Eco-Tourism” alternatives (walking safaris, yoga retreats, volunteering) to classic, drive-thru, shoot-em-up, chug-em-down, meathead-type safari tours.
I’ve been extremely blessed, lucky, spoiled with animal safaris, having done many, both “Eco” and Churchill style, across East Africa. Throughout them, I’ve taken hundreds of photos, and boasted of them when they won notoriety in a Lewis and Clark college photo contest. And come hour 10 in the back of a slow-moving Afro-jeep, participation in the subtle synthesis and exchange of soda and rum is unavoidable. What is also unavoidable when traveling with a large group of American girls (or is it any group of the opposite sex for whom you’re familiar with?), is emission of a noise more piercing and unforgettable than the loudest roar of simba: collective squealing. When fed strong coffee and confined to small spaces for hours, a herd of traveling girls from USA can summon a distinctly abrasive, high-pitched verbal reaction at the sight of adorable creatures. Squealing duration varies greatly, as researchers (tour guides) have confirmed squealing sessions that have continued for several hours without any sustained interruption of silence.
I’ve been extremely blessed, lucky, spoiled with animal safaris, having done many, both “Eco” and Churchill style, across East Africa. Throughout them, I’ve taken hundreds of photos, and boasted of them when they won notoriety in a Lewis and Clark college photo contest. And come hour 10 in the back of a slow-moving Afro-jeep, participation in the subtle synthesis and exchange of soda and rum is unavoidable. What is also unavoidable when traveling with a large group of American girls (or is it any group of the opposite sex for whom you’re familiar with?), is emission of a noise more piercing and unforgettable than the loudest roar of simba: collective squealing. When fed strong coffee and confined to small spaces for hours, a herd of traveling girls from USA can summon a distinctly abrasive, high-pitched verbal reaction at the sight of adorable creatures. Squealing duration varies greatly, as researchers (tour guides) have confirmed squealing sessions that have continued for several hours without any sustained interruption of silence.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Still Love Bob Marley Songs / And Drivin’ Hookers Crazy
Stark post-coloniality awaited in Malindi, courtesy of Scorpio Villas. 3 day break from substantial Kiswahili study, Waswahili practice. Palace-sized beds, cushions, mattresses, pillows delicately situated along mazes of hardwood floors and outdoor paths. Acres of mostly vacant villas scattered between palm trees and Jurassic-looking foliage. Africans serve red and white South African wine, spiked mango juice. Clean pulls of pulp-filled passionfruit juice complimented the already complementary. With Kenyan currency falling, the walimu (teachers) with Yale’s purchasing power are becoming more and more able to taste and share fruits of the rich.
To think of the living arrangements in Scorpio is to feel strangely uncomfortable. Noting like an unexpected onslaught of paid-for material luxuries to conjure American guilt, I guess. A reticence to indulge causes a motion deriving from aversion to the simplistic historical? Black Africans handing towels and bowing to White Sunbathers, the ratio of hotel workers exceeding that of occupants, women digging and carrying mud in view of my yoga poses. Rampant injustice? Such hotels are seen to offer primo jobs, and this one left no chore left understaffed, no tourist grievance left un-placated.
But it’ll eat ya souul? Tosha…time to dispense with apologies for narcissism, the unbridled self-reflexivity of predictable generalization. Rock and roll happened here.
As is custom in wealthy establishments across the world, Scorpio hired four musicians to entertain lucrative guests and assuage the ears of business owners by way of covering U.S.-England pop hits. As is typical, and enduringly bizarre, of East Africans’ preferences: Dire Straights “Walk of Life,” (I have heard this one played really, really late at clubs in Kenya) Cher “Do You Believe in Life After Love?” (A far cry from its recent House-techno incantations) “It’s Too Late to Apologize,” (They sung it at Kampala National Theatre, Reggae Monday, audience knew every word) “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” (The Portland Timbers supporter in me stood proud for this one).
The audience was four smartly dressed, beer sipping, young Kenyan women. If only it were more like a scene from an African-styled sequel to “Almost Famous,” and the girls sat to date/adore the band members. They began to study the floor harder as I found a slouchy, two-step off the 4/4 time. The vocalist sang the lowest notes he know how, letting his posture and sound shrink before wandering keys, droopy bass, relentlessly steady, flairless drums. Singing with a politeness that reflected the demure disposition of the other working men and women in the vicinity, the singer succeeded in blending in, refusing to draw attention to the music. He could not be celebrated, nor condemned. Only an attentive deciphering of his mumbled, accented lyrics could interpret origins of his covers.
After some other students trickled into the scene, Drummer asked if we were ready for reggae. We were. The exchange altered the band. Before, it had revealed its compositional competence, but concealed any performative countenance. But then the vocalist jumped an octave, exuding a passion that follows confidence. Postures perked all across the room, “singin don’t worry / bout a thing / cuz every little thing / gonna be all right. Suddenly, the singer was Pete Tosh, aided by The Congos on harmony. “Three Little Birds” turned to “One Love,” “Waiting in Vain,” and “Red Red Wine.”
Afterward, old man drummer said to me, “you sing us a song tomorrow…rock? Blues? But not reggae?” Apparently, he was not listening to what I kept saying over and over: “Night Nurse.” Initially, I wanted to hear the band play that Gregory Isaacs classic, which I thought could serve as some sort of salute to the local women in attendance. Finally, after the fifth time I said it, the singer sang the chorus to the drummer to let him know what I meant. They smiled. “Tomorrow, you sing with us Night Nurse.”
The next night, Saturday, the band played for a larger audience of working girls and tourists. Alternating between the pop covers were 9-14 minutes of African instrumental jams. I recall a reluctance to go up and ask them to stop their set for me. Making them stop and mess up their show for an mzungu to be into himself seemed, again, to be strange, uncomfortable; conjured a guilt that comes with relative affluence. But the African student on my program, Shani, was encouraging, predicting that the band would love an excuse to disrupt the ordinary. I walked up to the band after a number was winding down, barefoot, with kikoy and soccer jersey, and told them I’d been practicing “Night Nurse” that afternoon. They hadn’t, but told me to sing a note into the mic and then started an awesome reggae grove. The keyboardist listened to a few verses, the chorus, and proceeded to kill the song. We ran through it two or three times, altering solos, exchanging stupidly immodest grins. Nearly all of the students, my teacher, the drink servers, towel holders, and sex workers came over and hooted it up.
My memory of what happened next is certainly distorted, I recall the following theater…
As our Night Nurse faded into its last “only you only alone can quench dis here thirst,” Drummer grabbed me, and asked, “what next?”
Me: “I shot the sheriff?”
Him: “Okay, we don’t know but we will just play”
Me “I shot the sherri-ff” (into the mic, loudly)
Keyboard: (chords that perfectly corresponded to that salvo)
Me and band: rest of the song.
Drummer: “Now ‘No women no cry’”
[mid-way through song, the prostitutes got up, including a singer with a beautiful voice, someone who society should never allow to be prostitute] Her and I: “everything is gonna be all right / everything is gonna be alright”
Me: “what about redemption song?”
Keyboardist: “I play the guitar, we do a duet solo”
Drummer: [yelling] “Yes, Yes, Feel the Love, Reggae Music”
Dozen or so of the students and hotel workers, together, the intoxicated coming in with echoed harmonics a half verse behind: “Ole pirates yes dem rob I / sold I to thee mercant sheeps…
To think of the living arrangements in Scorpio is to feel strangely uncomfortable. Noting like an unexpected onslaught of paid-for material luxuries to conjure American guilt, I guess. A reticence to indulge causes a motion deriving from aversion to the simplistic historical? Black Africans handing towels and bowing to White Sunbathers, the ratio of hotel workers exceeding that of occupants, women digging and carrying mud in view of my yoga poses. Rampant injustice? Such hotels are seen to offer primo jobs, and this one left no chore left understaffed, no tourist grievance left un-placated.
But it’ll eat ya souul? Tosha…time to dispense with apologies for narcissism, the unbridled self-reflexivity of predictable generalization. Rock and roll happened here.
As is custom in wealthy establishments across the world, Scorpio hired four musicians to entertain lucrative guests and assuage the ears of business owners by way of covering U.S.-England pop hits. As is typical, and enduringly bizarre, of East Africans’ preferences: Dire Straights “Walk of Life,” (I have heard this one played really, really late at clubs in Kenya) Cher “Do You Believe in Life After Love?” (A far cry from its recent House-techno incantations) “It’s Too Late to Apologize,” (They sung it at Kampala National Theatre, Reggae Monday, audience knew every word) “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” (The Portland Timbers supporter in me stood proud for this one).
The audience was four smartly dressed, beer sipping, young Kenyan women. If only it were more like a scene from an African-styled sequel to “Almost Famous,” and the girls sat to date/adore the band members. They began to study the floor harder as I found a slouchy, two-step off the 4/4 time. The vocalist sang the lowest notes he know how, letting his posture and sound shrink before wandering keys, droopy bass, relentlessly steady, flairless drums. Singing with a politeness that reflected the demure disposition of the other working men and women in the vicinity, the singer succeeded in blending in, refusing to draw attention to the music. He could not be celebrated, nor condemned. Only an attentive deciphering of his mumbled, accented lyrics could interpret origins of his covers.
After some other students trickled into the scene, Drummer asked if we were ready for reggae. We were. The exchange altered the band. Before, it had revealed its compositional competence, but concealed any performative countenance. But then the vocalist jumped an octave, exuding a passion that follows confidence. Postures perked all across the room, “singin don’t worry / bout a thing / cuz every little thing / gonna be all right. Suddenly, the singer was Pete Tosh, aided by The Congos on harmony. “Three Little Birds” turned to “One Love,” “Waiting in Vain,” and “Red Red Wine.”
Afterward, old man drummer said to me, “you sing us a song tomorrow…rock? Blues? But not reggae?” Apparently, he was not listening to what I kept saying over and over: “Night Nurse.” Initially, I wanted to hear the band play that Gregory Isaacs classic, which I thought could serve as some sort of salute to the local women in attendance. Finally, after the fifth time I said it, the singer sang the chorus to the drummer to let him know what I meant. They smiled. “Tomorrow, you sing with us Night Nurse.”
The next night, Saturday, the band played for a larger audience of working girls and tourists. Alternating between the pop covers were 9-14 minutes of African instrumental jams. I recall a reluctance to go up and ask them to stop their set for me. Making them stop and mess up their show for an mzungu to be into himself seemed, again, to be strange, uncomfortable; conjured a guilt that comes with relative affluence. But the African student on my program, Shani, was encouraging, predicting that the band would love an excuse to disrupt the ordinary. I walked up to the band after a number was winding down, barefoot, with kikoy and soccer jersey, and told them I’d been practicing “Night Nurse” that afternoon. They hadn’t, but told me to sing a note into the mic and then started an awesome reggae grove. The keyboardist listened to a few verses, the chorus, and proceeded to kill the song. We ran through it two or three times, altering solos, exchanging stupidly immodest grins. Nearly all of the students, my teacher, the drink servers, towel holders, and sex workers came over and hooted it up.
My memory of what happened next is certainly distorted, I recall the following theater…
As our Night Nurse faded into its last “only you only alone can quench dis here thirst,” Drummer grabbed me, and asked, “what next?”
Me: “I shot the sheriff?”
Him: “Okay, we don’t know but we will just play”
Me “I shot the sherri-ff” (into the mic, loudly)
Keyboard: (chords that perfectly corresponded to that salvo)
Me and band: rest of the song.
Drummer: “Now ‘No women no cry’”
[mid-way through song, the prostitutes got up, including a singer with a beautiful voice, someone who society should never allow to be prostitute] Her and I: “everything is gonna be all right / everything is gonna be alright”
Me: “what about redemption song?”
Keyboardist: “I play the guitar, we do a duet solo”
Drummer: [yelling] “Yes, Yes, Feel the Love, Reggae Music”
Dozen or so of the students and hotel workers, together, the intoxicated coming in with echoed harmonics a half verse behind: “Ole pirates yes dem rob I / sold I to thee mercant sheeps…
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