Halloween with Maracatu New York

I'm at the end of an exhausting but really good last couple days in New York. Have bought all my last things that I need for Brazil (the last essentials being three bags of chocolate chips, brown sugar, baking powder, and a big jar of peanut butter).

Tonight was the Halloween Parade. Oh my god.... this is a HELL of a Halloween parade that New York City has. I didn't realize it was such a big deal! A mile and a half straight up Sixth Avenue, all the cross streets closed off, a completely massive crowd lining both sides, TV coverage, great floats, big beautiful puppets. But the best part was the crowd itself, all dressed in the most insanely magnificent costumes, and everybody in a great mood, festive and cheerful and friendly. Cheerful bouncing ogres, sumo wrestlers, Vincent Van Goghs and Barbie dolls, kings and queens (drag and otherwise). New York City at its best.

My mom had come down from Boston just to see the parade; it was so great to have her here.

Maracatu New York was intense. They are the real deal. They had at least forty drummers today (beefed up, apparently, by music students from a class that Scott teaches at the New School). Probably half were alfaias, plus four shekeres, a hefty phalanx of bells and a line of solid, skilled caixas who played with that effortless smoothness and power that looked like either drumset or marching-band experience. All together... it was something else. Thunderous and powerful, and genuine, with that wild heart of maracatu. It felt like Rio Maracatu's Santa Teresa Carnaval parades in Rio. It was the real thing. And the whole crowd dancing and leaping, and sweeping along with us like kids after the Pied Piper.

We played full-on for about four hours solid - two hours warming up and two parading. It's kind of all a blur now - Jorge jumping up and down like a crazed bear, Scott literally racing through the band was his gongue, bright-eyed and laughing.... groover after groove and break after break - glancing back at the amazing line of alfaias behind me - horsing around with the shekeres on either side. Totally worn out and my arms sore at the end.... thank god Annette was passing around the brown-bagged cognac (and good stuff too). But in spite of the exhaustion it was a FANTASTIC shekere night for me. The Sunday parade two days ago was the perfect warmup and suddenly, tonight the stamina was there, the efficiency and lightness I'd been searching for, the bright CRACK with minimum effort, and the dancing grace in the shekere began to come out.

We were all so excited at the end that we all wanted to keep playing, even after we'd turned off the end of the parade route into the darkened side street where we were supposed to shut up. Scott was very persistently trying to get us to shut up, with that intensity that usually means the cops were cracking down on him about it - but Jorge kept restarting the band with new maracatu calls. Jorge started jokingly yellng "Tu mara-ca!" as if he were about to call in the band again, with alfaias raggedly entering and Scott going "Shhh! No! Really, we have to stop!" Finally Scott started laughing about it and flinging drumsticks at Jorge. So my last image of Maracatu New York is of Jorge Martins racing around in the dark empty street, zig-zagging back and forth and yelling "Tu mara-ca! Tu mara-ca!", dodging the drumsticks that Scott was whipping at him from thirty feet away, both of them darting around like puppies. Everybody laughing.

It's time to leave. Rio is calling now. But I wish I could stay and get to know NY better.... I was just beginning to learn people's names, in Maracatu New York and in the other groups too, and already I have to say goodbye. Didn't get near enough time with my friend Fernanda. Managed to re-connect with another friend Robyn, though, which has lifted a burden off of me; I have missed her a lot, and now I feel like I can breathe easier. And I got to see my mom and dad and brother. And I made a lot of new friends, and strengthened some old friendships. I'll get to see Michele, Scott, Jorge and Annette in Brazil in just a few months! Seems like everybody is coming down this year - a lot of Lions are coming down too, and it seems like everybody's headed for Recife.

Annette met my mom briefly, and she said to my mom unexpectedly "Your daugher's a really good player. And she's got lots of friends. She's got friends all over, so don't worry about her." Such a sweet thing to say. I like to think it might be true.

Wait, I have to adjust my bat

Maracatu New York had a little parade Sunday at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which the group was using sort of as a warm-up for the big parade on Tuesday. It turned out to be your basic two hundred adorable little kids in adorable little outfits, all of them exactly two feet tall and tumbling all over each other in excitement. Several tiny little Darth Vaders chasing two tiny little Luke Skywalkers, tiny little walking pumpkins and bumblebees running pell-mell between my legs, tiny little ninjas counting their candy, innumerable tiny little princesses and little mermaids, an amazing tiny little green swamp monster, and dozens and dozens more. I'm not normally a kid-lover but this particular crowd was beyond adorable, radioactively cute.

It was a bright sunny day, but windy and very chilly. I found the Maracatu New York guys huddled in a sunny spot packing up their workshop drums. Jorge and Scott had been there since noon doing body-percussion workshops for all the kids. Last night I'd asked Jorge what he most needed right now for his percussion-for-kids project in Recife. He'd clearly been thinking about that because as soon as saw me - well, after he'd first said "I'm freezing to death! How do you people stand this!" and grabbed the extra sweatshirt I was carrying to wrap his hands in it - after that, he said (em portugues) "One thing we need right now is someone to help translate some things into English. Website content and other information, to help raise funds from English-speaking countries." Hey! Translation, I can do that! He's also hoping to arrange more English lessons for some of the kids in his program - maybe I can help with that too, who knows. Nice to think I might be able to contribute something.

Anyway, the Botanic Garden event was pretty cool. Lots of activities for the kids, and a nice selection of bands ranging from old-time country to salsa. (I especially appreciated the free hot potato chowder, chocolate bars and hot hot coffee, backstage for all the musicians). The most popular kid activity seemed to be a long row of tables lined with kids who carefully spooning beans and popcorn into something they were holding carefully in their hands. Turned out to be a "Build your own shaker egg" assembly line. The kids had picked out an empty plastic egg, decorated it, and were painstakingly choosing their own favorite assortment of rice, popcorn, beans, etc. Then an adult sealed the two halves securely together with colorful tape (with the beans, etc., inside), and presto, each kid had his or her own custom-made shaker egg. Cool idea.

After a large amount of time fussing around backstage and admiring Maracatu NY drummer's costumes, suddenly we were onstage. I was alarmed to find myself front and center, and in front of the mic, no less - I don't know MNY's repertoire and was faking my way through all the breaks. Thankfully the parade started soon & we were off on a half-hour loop through the Botanic Garden. Definitely the cutest parade I've been part of. We were trailed by hundreds of those tiny elves, tiny Spidermen, tiny little mermaids, etc., many of whom were magnetically drawn to the drummers and kept drifting underfoot, waving their little flags excitedly around. And dozens and dozens of parents darting around with videocameras.

I was impressed with MNY. The group is five years old now, turns out, and it shows in the experience of their alfaia players. Alfaia is a type of bass drum unique to maracatu, and it's played with a peculiar backwards-whip motion of the left arm. Experienced alfaia players throw their whole body into it, and get into a sort of up-and-down dance that accentuates the whipping motion of their arms. It looks something like they're paddling a kayak down a class-5 rapids while wrestling a huge invisible boa constrictor. It would look weird if it didn't look so damn cool! Turns out it looks especially impressive when the players are all dressed as giant multi-armed spiders, fierce glam-rock stars and enormous burly clowns. (I really have to get a better costume together by Tuesday!)

I turned out to be the only shekere - hmm, maybe that's why Scott had said "I'll loan you that shekere if you come to the Botanic Garden" - so it was a really good workout for me. My stamina on shekere is not that super because I haven't been playing it much recently, but as the only shekere, I had to keep going and had to keep steady. It was one of those parades where 30 seconds into it, you think "Oh hell, this is going to hurt!" but you just have to keep going. On top of that I had a bat problem. I had a black toy bat attached to the shekere netting, which I thought looked just awesome dancing around with the motion of the shekere. But every now and then the bat would whip around on the end of his little elastic leash and wedge right under my hand. Somehow the bat's head kept getting between my hand and the shekere, just when the shekere was coming down. I kept having to stop and readjust my bat. Should have taken it off, I suppose, but it looked so cool! And in the immortal words of the Mighty Boosh (more or less) "You guys, you're wasting all your time practicing and trying to play right - don't you know it's all about how you LOOK??"

I ended up with a good bat bruise on my left hand, but it was worth it. Eventually the poor little bat was shaken right to pieces - one of his wings was shekere'd right off. I'll have to get a sturdier bat for Tuesday.

Two more NY groups

I can't believe my luck recently... got a last-minute flight change for free that is letting me stay in Manhattan till Nov. 1, so I can catch the Halloween parade. Then a friend who is out of town is letting me use his unbelievably fantastic Manhattan apartment for the weekend - HUGE (biggest place I've probably ever stayed in all year!), gorgeous, free wifi, cool roommates, great cat too! & incredible location on the Soho/Chinatown border. Plus, I got invites from 3 different groups to play in the Halloween Parade - Manhattan Samba, Samba New York, and Maracatu New York. That was a painful choice....I wanted to play with all of them! Chose Maracatu New York since I know I'll get to play lots of samba in Rio very soon.

I had a great time at Samba New York's advanced class on Thursday, then had a fascinating lunch with their director, Philip Galinsky, the next day. He is an ethnomusicologist with a broad music background (jazz, classical, etc.) who then went into ethnomusicology & did his master's on the music of Salvador, and his PhD on mangue-beat in Recife; and then lived in Rio several times after that, just to top it all off. It was so nice to be able to chat samba & maracatu nonstop for a couple hours with someone who knew exactly where I was coming from, and who understood exactly the sort of things I'd been noticing and thinking about.

Today, Saturday, I headed to Brooklyn to catch Maracatu New York's last rehearsal before the Halloween Parade. Maracatu New York is led by an American musician, Scott Kettner, who has been regularly bringing up a maracatu master from Recife, Jorge Martins. The rehearsal was wonderful; they took us out into a little concrete park near their rehearsal space, where Jorge led us through a very rich and elaborate maracatu repertoire. Scott asked me to play shekere; he had a hefty lineup of some 15 alfaia players, a pile of caixas and three bells, but only one shekere. So I got me a shekere and went out with them. The weather got crazy, gales of wind whipping storm clouds overhead, leaves blowing everywhere, bright blinding sun changing to chilly grey icy wind in a flash. The wind was blowing so strongly that it kept my shekere's netting of beads bellied out like a sail (made it a little hard to play). But it never quite rained, though it threatened to.

Partway through rehearsal, Annette the conga player showed up and joined me on shekere. She plays it with that beautiful light Afro-Cuban touch, very efficient; she kept horsing around with it and cracking me up, especially when she shook it upsidedown and a pile of tiny skeletons and rubber snakes came flying out of it.

It turned into a really fun evening; Annette and Jorge Martins and I ended up hanging out the entire rest of the day, and evening, and late night, till 1 am; first grabbing a beer at an Australian pub; then the incredibly long subway ride to Annette's place (from Brooklyn clear up to 200th St in Manhattan); then a trip to the corner place for a few more beers; then Annette's place, where I poked around Annette's pile of mementos and snapshots and slowly realized that she knows or has played with just about every great Brazilian or Afro-Cuban player on the West and East Coasts combined; then an impromptu conga lesson for Jorge; a few trips to the corner store for a few more beers; then somehow we ended up at a birthday party of a capoeira player who has recently married a Brazilian girl that Jorge somehow knew who just happened to live a few blocks away. The girl, Claudia, turned out to be just adorable - brand new to the United States, loving New York, and learning English at a lightspeed pace. She made some superb caipirinhas for us, and they gave us beers and pizzas and birthday cake, and Annette found the capoeira guy's pandeiros and we played until the neighbors politely complained. The mix of beers and caipirinhas and more beers, and the crazy fractured three-way conversation in scrambled Portuguese, English, and Spanish began to buzz my brain in and out of strange Alice-in-Wonderland language states. At the end of the evening, as Jorge and I started our epic subway journeys together on the A train (he heading to Brooklyn, me to Chinatown), we were in a fairly complicated conversation when Jorge said a word I didn't know and with a jolt I realized he'd been talking in Portuguese the entire time, and so had I. I hadn't noticed; I'd thought we'd been talking in English.

Scott has loaned me a shekere & invited me to come parade with them on Sunday too, as well as at the Halloween Parade. It's turning into a beautifully musical week. Now if I can just get some time to practice pandeiro, for once.....

O prisioneiro da Azkaban

Continued reading Harry Potter e o Prisioneiro da Azkaban. Books for older kids are perfect for me at this stage - the vocabulary is quite advanced, but not drenched in confusing metaphorical/emotional floweriness. And the plot buzzes along so quickly. When it takes you half an hour to read a page, it's rewarding when something actually happens - someone falls off a cliff or a train blows up, or even just a silly joke. Makes it seem worth while.

My first real books in Portuguese, last year, were Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. (I started with books I'd previously read in English, since my half-memory of the plot can carry me through the unfamiliar parts. Plus, I found a lot of English classics, translated to Portuguese, in cheap paperback racks at the newstands.) With those, and now with the Harry Potter books, each day I read a few chapters and underline the words & phrases I don't know. Then later (this is the part that takes some discipline), I try to make myself go back and look up all the underlined words. And then, a few days later, re-read the chapter again and see if I remember what all those underlined words are. They don't really stick unless I go back a few days later and see them again.

It takes a while at first, but pretty soon you can just buzz right along and pretty much read at full speed. It's enjoyable reading in Portuguese now.

New words & phrases today included: attack, hum, venomous slug, sprinkle, half-open door, be on guard, in over your head, that's not funny at all, mark my words, make a face at (em portugues, it's "tie a face at"), bump into, deafening crash, and, of course, "third brick from the left" - terceiro tijolo a contar da esquerda.

I was startled at a mention of a "new wand of Salgueiro" until I remembered that Salgueiro is not just the name of a samba escola, it's the word for "willow". Harry's friend had bought a new wand made of willow wood. It made me think of some famous escola names as they must appear to native speakers:

Big River
Mountain Empire
Willow
Hummingbird
Garden-hose (or, mango tree)
Independent Youth
Stone Harbor
Isabel Village
Empress
Bog United

Recognize them?

iPods for iRio

Well, I didn't get up to the Bronx after all to see Annette teach. :( I really wanted to, but, though I've been calling American every day, no luck on changing my ticket. So it really looks like I'll have to leave on Thursday. Rats. So, today, instead of the Bronx I had to do a big shopping binge for my friends in Rio (scouting expedition today, consult with them Tuesday, further shopping Wednesday - it is a complicated endeavour). I'd promised them I could bring them some stuff from the US.

I'd written one friend in particular to ask what she wanted, and got this reply:

"oooooo let's see ! I think one of the red ipod nanos, or do you think I should get a shuffle? and my friend would really like either a silver or white nano ipod. And an ipod adaptor. And, I think, an ipod car adaptor so it can play on the radio? I would really like to get a macbook but perhaps I cannot afford that - oo I get so excited when I see the prices on the Apple website, I go a little crazy. Do you think maybe one other ipod? video? or one of the sound systems that connects to an ipod?"

Her entire shopping list was all Apple products! Poor Brazilians, I feel for them - Brazil slaps a whopping 100% import tariff on all imported electronics, including those coveted ipods. So of course there is a booming black market in smuggled ipods.

I was a little worried that the Brazilian customs guys might raise an eyebrow at my own brand-new macbook and video ipod, along with two or three other ipods that are gifts for those friends. Here's the deal: I checked with a friend who has some, ahem, "experience" bringing "gift" ipods to Brazil, and here's the deal, as of 2006: You're allowed to bring in your own personal electronics, no problem, and no limit, as long as they are clearly your own personal stuff. So as long as my macbook & video ipod are obviously my own personal items - i.e. not in original packaging any more, and loaded with my files - I can bring those in. Beyond that, you're also allowed to bring in an additional $500 worth of new electronics (i.e. still in their packaging).

So in theory, for example, I could bring in my new macbook, my own video ipod, my own nano ipod too, and my own shuffle ipod, as long as they all have my own files on it and I can convincingly demonstrate that they are my own; and up to $500 worth of other new ipods too (that's two 4-gig nanos and a shuffle).

This is all without even getting into the "but what if it gets stolen" aspect of bringing anything to Brazil. That's really a mental game of learning to not mind if you lose everything, and then you're pleasantly surprised if you don't. In my case I have to bring a laptop because of my work; I am a writer and will be working from Rio. My advice, if you are in the same situation, is to keep your laptop in a really ragged looking backpack so that it doesn't look like anything - not in a snappy looking shoulder bag. Arrange to be met by a reliable cabbie (any friend in Rio can recommend someone) and take it straight to your hotel or a secure apartment. Bring blank cds, & mail backups of the key stuff home to yourself now and then. It's not really such a big deal.... I took my laptop all over Brazil and to about 8 different hostels with no trouble. The trick is to truly not mind if it gets stolen.

Most robberies that I've heard of, or have had happen, have all been on buses, or theft of stuff sent through the mail. The long-distance bus robberies are the worst since you have all your stuff with you and they can get it all. For the mail.... do not have your friends send ANYTHING electronic through the mail - camera, sound recorders, - the package simply will not reach you. This happens so consistently, and with such a precise distinction between packages that have electronics and those that don't, that I think the Brazilian customs or post office guys must x-ray the packages to pick out the best ones to take. A Christmas package that never reached me last year made me so sad when it didn't arrive, that for months I would get weepy whenever I thought of it - because it was the only package from home all year (I had been alone for all the holidays, too) and it had become very symbolic of the fact that somebody, somewhere, still knew and cared that I was alive.

Don't ever let yourself get that attached to any object. The person still loves you; it doesn't really matter if the thing they sent you gets stolen.

Once you get into the swing of it, you realize it really doesn't matter if you lose absolutely everything. Each day of sunshine, with food to eat, and a place to sleep at night, music to dance to, and friends to talk to - that is all you really need.

HOWEVER, that said, those ipods sure are fun!

The 2007 songs are chosen

Friday:
This afternoon I went to help out at a percussion/dance after-school club for disadvantaged New York kids. I heard today about 3 different programs of this type (in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn). This was in Manhattan, taught by Glenn and Annette (percussion) and a great dance teacher, Kenia. The kids were minority, disadvantaged, high-school freshman, special-ed kids in a "troubled" school - try all that for a teaching challenge.

I played primeira most of the time to help anchor the little group. I was really impressed with a black teen girl next to me who was alone on samba-reggae cutter - the first time she'd tried that part - and doing a great job. Really good natural sense of time and able to do a steady strong roll; quick at learning breaks and calls. She was acting unimpressed and bored, but was playing her heart out! Later a teacher told me "She pretends she's not interested. A few weeks ago she made a big announcement about how she was quitting the club. But then every week she comes by, to remind us about how she has quit from the club, and then she just happens to hang out and drum for another hour."

A nice time afterwards hanging out with Annette and talking about teaching. We found a great little bakery and sat there looking at all the goodies ("Hey buddy, don't take that tray of cupcakes away!! What? Oh, no, we don't want one. But we were enjoying looking at them.") All the classic teaching questions of: how do you keep control - especially with wild kids in bad schools in the Bronx or Brooklyn? What do you do with kids who don't want to learn? What do you do with kids who do want to learn, but have to act like they don't care because it's not cool to enjoy a class? Annette had an interesting take on folding in lots of other topics in with the music - geography, history, politics etc. Turns out she's got a master's in music education (on top of her other degree in music). She invited me to come up to the Bronx on Monday to check out "the eighth-grade girls - they're cool" and a Latin Jazz ensemble at a new performing-arts high school. Told me to bring my pandeiro. hmm, I'd better practice...

Today I decided to try to stay till Halloween to play with Maracatu New York (if they let me) in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade - supposedly the best in the country, and the best holiday in New York, and the best costumes on the entire planet, everybody says. (though I have a hard time imagining that the costumes could top the Rio Carnaval costume contests - some of those costumes cost half a million dollars!) I called American Airlines today, but their flights are all booked for the first half of November - every single flight booked solid. I'll keep checking every day.

Had a bunch of blasts from the past today. My old friend Robyn wrote - my friend who paraded with me in Rio last year with the escola Imperio Serrano. It made me very happy to hear from her again. Then at almost the same moment, who else should write but Imperio Serrano itself! To announce that they have chosen their new samba-enredo for 2007! Well, that brought back a whole flood of other Robyn memories from 2006 - our ridiculous spiky outfits and crazy crowns and little golden trays. Our ala director's ecstatic delight that we had actually learned all the words.

Imperio's enredo this year is "It's normal to be different", and the samba composers are the same team who wrote Imperio's prize-winning samba from 2006, the one Robyn and I learned. I remember us singing it over and over in my little Copacabana studio, and singing it on the beach, and a month later, the two of us trying to remember the whole thing while we were curled up chatting in our tent on the Inca Trail. Yes, I still remember the whole thing! "Cantando de forma de um oracao, Serrinha pede paz, felicidade...." kinda been my theme song this year, come to think of it: Singing in the form of a prayer, the serrinha (Imperio Serrano member) asks for peace, happiness.

The escolas have just chosen their songs! I haven't heard any of the songs yet, not even Imperio's, but word is that this is a great song year. The Carnaval songs (samba-enredos) are different every year, and there are good years and bad years, and apparently this is shaping up to be a great year. This next two months are going to fun. November is one of my very favorite months in Rio - the songs just chosen, the community learning the lyrics, the drum directors (mestres) developing new percussion breaks for their song, the costume and float prototypes being unveiled. And everyone starting to get excited as they see the shape that it is all taking.

I remember the incredible Imperio terceira players and their amazing solo breaks, and the way they developed huge terceira structures that extended the entire length of the song. Hey... as much as I wanted to play in the Halloween parade with Maracatu New York, I guess going to Rio right now ain't a bad option either.

Manhattan Samba

Raced back to Manhattan Thurs night to check out the rehearsal of Manhattan Samba in the Meatpacking District. Eventually I found the samba leader, Ivo, unloading drums from his van in a parking lot right by the river, at the end of a warren of battered, graffiti'd warehouses peppered with incongruously hip, polished restaurants. He has rehearsals outside when it's not raining.

There are basically three ways to run a samba group: as a pay-as-you series of classes, as a dues-paying membership, or as a pro group. Like many of the groups in the bigger cities, Manhattan Samba takes the first path. Pay as you go, $20 per session. Samba groups with this kind of pay structure aren't always worth it for me. But this one was worth it; Ivo knows his shit. He appears to take special pains to be sure everyone circulates on all the instruments and learns all of them. Today he'd brought an enormous amount of quad bells and caixas in his van, and stepped us through first a half-hour quad bell lesson, then a half-hour caixa lesson. Then, eventually, he phased some people to surdo and switched to teaching repertoire for the upcoming parade.

I had a great time. Learned some new stuff on quad bell, some cool breaks, learned some good caixa patterns, got a helpful technique fix on surdo (Ivo wanted me to bring my mallet alllllll the way up and back - I used to be so good about that, but I've been getting lazy and playing with a lazy low soft stroke), and, at the end, some cool short breaks that lay against the song really nicely.

My caixa playing seemed inexplicably all wobbly again - I have GOT to find some way to get regular practice time in when I'm travelling, because I'm distressed at how quickly I lose speed, swing and stamina. It seems like, just one week off and suddenly I can barely play. (I should be carrying my sticks - and my pandeiro - with me around Manhattan, and practicing in parks. And not getting distracted by dinosaurs.) But eventually I got rolling again.

Ivo used a really helpful caixa drill that I want to remember for my own teaching: he played continuously, but the students played only every other clave. Play, then listen. Play, then listen. This solved that awful problem in group classes in which beginners can only hear each other, and cannot remember exactly what sound or what swing they are aiming for. During the caixa session, Ivo also played with two sticks in each hand (four sticks total), sometthing I've never seen anyone do before - I think it was to make him twice as loud so that we could hear him better. Whatever the reason, there was surprisingly rapid progress in the class.

And glory be, if he didn't teach EXACTLY the two caixa patterns I've been most interested in recently, but with new variations: Mangueira and Mocidade. Delightful for me. More drum geekery will follow in a separate post for those who are interested.

Then I was switched to third, and off we went in samba. Fun to be on third again. There was one other guy on third who felt like a nice match, a really clean, strong player. We locked well. We kept unconsciouly sync'ing up and doing the same variation at the same time, or finishing each other's variations. Eventually it was past 10pm (official rehearsal end time) and it had started to sprinkle, then drizzle, then it was definitely raining. My surdo head was started to get alarmingly wet. I had to catch the 10:39 train out of Penn Station - the next train after that would be over an hour later. I caught a glance at a neighbor's watch - 10:04. Ivo saw me do that and said sharply to me "YOU CAN'T LEAVE NOW." Someone else made some tiny intention-movement toward their bag and Ivo said emphatically, as we stood there getting wetter and wetter, "It is not raining! You can't leave! You must stay! IT IS NOT RAINING!" as the rain came pelting down. Made me laugh - but I was happy to stay, even happy to miss the train. We went through the samba several more times (and yes, it was fun.)

I said a heartfelt thanks to Ivo & everyone, hustled five blocks to the subway station, sprinted to an A line train that was magically waiting right there for me. Got to Penn Station, glanced up at the display board and saw it was 10:40 and the ALL ABOARD sign was blinking for my 10:39 train. Flat-out SPRINT time, across the full length of Penn Station, clear down to track 2, down the stairs two at a time, jumped into the train, doors closed and we were off! Nick. of. time. Whew! Back I went to Maplewood, caixa patterns ringing in my head.

Read Harry Potter in Portuguese the whole way to Maplewood. I learned the words for wizard, spell, wand, broom, cauldron, muggle, yell, owl, cage, chest, floorboard, pulverize, and scar.

I really like this city.

How to attract guys through drumming

Thursday: Woke up to the sounds of whispered Bulgarian! Three Bulgarian girls from Plovdiv had joined me in my dorm room in the night. They were amazed that I not only knew where Plovdiv was, but had actually been there (and loved it). Shades of my Balkan music past....

A quick visit to the American Museum of Natural History. I knew I couldn't afford the $20 ticket price, so I'd really just stopped in to see fantastic Barosaurus skeleton mount in the lobby. It's the tallest freestanding dinosaur mount in the world and the one that always makes me realize: oh my god, these creatures actually were real and actually once walked the Earth. And, softie that I am, I always get choked up at the sight of that skeleton Barosaurus mom trying to defend her cute little skeleton baby against that nasty-looking skeleton Allosaurus.

Whatta meanie!

Then it turned out I could get in for just $2 (or whatever I wanted to pay) so in I went! They've completely redone their dinosaur exhibits and it's FANTASTIC. I had been planning to do some drumstick practice, outside in Central Park, but there I was wandering the halls of the AMNH with my drumsticks clutched silent in my hands, reading every little dinosaur-anatomy explanation, and riveted by the trompe l'oiel background paintings of the African mammal dioramas. You can take the girl out of science, but you can't take science out of the girl. It's still the greatest story ever told.

Then I gathered all my stuff from the hostel to relocate to Maplewood, New Jersey, where some distant relatives that I barely know have very kindly offered me free lodging. It might be a little far out for me, but the train ride's not bad. Well, after lugging my suitcase and duffel from the hostel to the subway and down the stairs and through the turnstile and onto the train and off again and through another turnstile and down more stairs to Penn Station and up stairs to New Jersey Transit and down some stairs and down some more stairs and up onto the train to Maplewood and off the train and then through the streets to Danny's house half a mile away, I am soooo glad that when packing for this trip, I held desperately to this one guideline:

"I absolutely have to be able to walk up or down a set of stairs carrying all my luggage, unaided."

It means I have no raincoat, no backup shoes and no books, but I can move! Well, ok, Danny aided me on the second half, but basically I was able to do it.

When you are travelling alone, you cannot leave someone else with the luggage while you talk to the cabbie, or check the map, or buy the cup of coffee, or whatever. You have to be able to do it all yourself, all the time. The biggest lesson of the last two years for me: I have to never be dependent on anyone, ever. I have to be able to do it alone. Whatever "it" may be. If a friend like Danny shows up to help, super. But I can't ever rely on that.

While I was on the subway, an extremely cute guy across the aisle somehow read the tiny address sticker on my suitcase. "You're from Seattle?" he said hopefully. Turns out he is too, though he's a New Yorker now. He seemed eager to connect with a Seattle-ite ("You live near Green Lake?? So does my brother!!! And I'm from Fremont!!"), then asked if I was visiting New York. I gave my usual "Well, I'm on my way to Brazil," reply and then of course we got into the fact that it was five months, to study percussion. At this point he did the wide-eyed doubletake that I get from so many people. "You - whoa. What?" He actually got up and came over to sit next to me, fascinated and wanting to talk more. Five months? Percussion? And you went last year too? Pity Penn Station was the next stop! I almost missed the stop and just scampered out in time, the guy yelling after me "Have a great trip!!" Bye, cute subway guy!

Apparently, if you want to attract guys, all you gotta do is quit your job and go to Brazil to study percussion for five or six months. I have probably met more guys in just the last year than in the entire rest of my life all added up! Half I meet via music, since of couse drumming is a social thing and most other drummers are guys. But the other half just seem to approach me out of the blue, somehow, and seem to be fascinated by my story. I never used to get any attention from guys but now I am practically fending them off. The Cuban artist in Portland who would hover at my doorway and gaze at me with puppydog eyes; the well-dressed fellow in Oakland stammering "Are, are you a model, or something? Sorry, it's just, it's just, you're very striking." Not just guys, either: the doe-eyed Brazilian girl interrupting me, laughing and a bit tipsy, when I was in the middle of some drum story, with "Kathleen, I think I'm falling for you." What the hell?? How did this start happening?

My friend Robyn told me once, "You did so get attention before; you just never recognized it before because you were too shy to look at anybody or talk to anybody. Brazil made you less shy." Well, that might be true. There is nothing like bumbling alone through a foreign language for six months to get you out of your shell. It seemed bitterly difficult at the time, but maybe it paid off.

Anyway, about one guy per day shows some interest, and about one a week asks me out. About one per month for the girls. It's been like this ever since I got back from Brazil. It's the weirdest thing! I'm not complaining - it's nice - but it is a very strange change, especially since I'm of an age now where you're supposed to be getting less attention from potential partners, not more. And I was not getting any attention from guys in Brazil at all. (Robyn again: "You were so! It's just that you were walking so damn fast you never saw them looking at you - but I was always about 50 feet behind you and I saw all the turned heads that you were leaving in your wake!")

Despite all these pleasant options, something has happened to me over the past year of Brazil and samba and travel... I am no longer looking for a partner. I think I've gotten too independent. (Like wanting to carry all my suitcases myself.) I've had to become independent, to survive, and now I love it. The freedom is soooo addictive. Plus nobody can keep up with me anyway.

But even if I don't want a partner, I do want friends, and I will take all the friends I can get.

Robyn's comment about trailing along behind me was funny! I don't know that I believed her about the turned heads, but it was a nice thing for her to say. And it IS true that I walk faster than anyone else in the universe. Like I said, nobody can keep up with me, literally! By the time Robyn joined me in Rio, I'd been alone so long, and so used to walking fast to fend off the possible muggers, that I couldn't slow down even when I tried. Poor kid, she was always trailing along behind, scurrying to catch up, until the thought would finally cross my mind "Hey, what happened to Robyn?" and I'd finally wait for her to catch up.

It's okay though, because she got the last laugh at the 13,000' Dead Woman's Pass on the Inca Trail.

The best story though was from a friend of mine who also lived alone in Rio and also got into the habit of Speed-walking For Personal Protection. Like me, she had probable-muggers try to trail her, and she would just accelerate and leave them in the dust. One day a probable-mugger was coming up behind her and she took off, and heard him say plaintively, from far behind, "Hey, slow down! I can't keep up1"



Best New York conversations overheard today:

"Be careful you don't get lost in the universe!" - said to someone about to enter the astronomy wing at the museum

"So, I only have to lose 4% more body fat and I'll be an athlete!" - overheard cell phone conversation

"We were both in the women's room and she said I had nice eyes, so I said she had nice lips and she totally came on to me! But she really DID have nice lips." - girl on the New Jersey Transit train to two girlfriends

Two guys arguing on the street:
First man: "You ARE SO drunk!!"
Second man (tearfully): "No I'm NOT!"
First man slams second man to the wall and says:
"YOU JUST *TOLD* ME YOU'RE DRUNK!!"

Me and a deli counter guy:
"What kinda bagel?"
"Sesame."
"Sesa-who? SESA-YOU! HA HA HA HA!"

Accidental Choro

Ok, I was trying to be all cynical and ho-hum about New York, but it turns out I really love it. I've been here many times before - I grew up in New Jersey and Boston, so I've been through NY quite a bit - but this time is different; it's the first time I have been here as a musician, and as an adult who now enjoys going out. New York's greatest asset to me in the old days was simply that it was, inexplicably, the best place in the US to rent a horse. (It is the only US city where you can take a horse out all by yourself - no guide - and gallop, not just walk.)

But now I see everything else that it has to offer. And after having spent so many years on the West Coast, all of New York's East Coast aspects are swamping me with nostalgia. So it feels like coming home; but also feels fresh and new. Small-town New England, and huge and glittering, at the same time. And it's still the best place to rent a horse!

I managed to find a bunk in a decent hostel on the Upper West Side for only $35 a night - and the big dorm rooms are even cheaper at just $26!! I was amazed you can get a decent bunk in New York City for that price. It's just standard hostel fare - tiny rooms crowded with bunks, tiny lockers, shared bathrooms, and backpacks everywhere - but the bunks and bathrooms were clean, the shower was hot, and the security good, and it turned out to have free wi-fi (not on purpose, I think). Central Park Hostel, if you ever need a cheap bed in NY.

Met my great friend Fernanda on Wednesday - a grand reunion for both of us. She's a Brazilian; we met in the Seattle bloco VamoLa, where she played caixa. We could not hug each other enough when we first saw each other! It was so, so good to catch up with a such a dear, dear friend. We just talked and talked and talked from 6:30 clear to midnight. Turns out her friend Flavio, a carioca who plays guitar for Bossacucanova, is coming to town this weekend too! It'll be fun to see him - and I'm sure I'll see him in Rio later.

We finally said goodbye and headed to our separate subway stops. I got down into the station, then mistakenly thought that entrance was closed (the turnstiles were locked, but the revolving doors weren't, turns out) and headed back up to the street, and what should I walk past but a little sign directly in my path reading "Tonight: Choro Ensemble". Down in a tiny basement bar was, sure enough, a genuine Brazilian choro ensemble called, accurately if unimaginatively, "Choro Ensemble". Three cariocas, a paulista, and a charming Israeli clarinet girl, who carefully pronounced the name of each song into her clarinet pick-up. There was a two-drink minimum but I begged the waitress and bouncer to let me stay for free. They did - and it was great choro. Highlighted for me by a really beautiful, nimble solo by the pandeiro player. I thanked him afterwards and mentioned I was going to Rio to study with Celso Silva. He said, "Tell him Ze says hi!" Small world!!!

Manhattan

Could not sleep at all last night.... lay wide awake in bed and kept glancing over at the clock. I'd managed to squish my whole 5 months' worth of stuff into 1 suitcase and 1 small duffel and was pretty sure I had everything I needed, but was worried about where I would stay in NY (some leads with friends had fallen through). (I am stopping in New York for several days en route to Rio.) I kept getting anxious over whether I was forgetting something crucial. As I lay in bed, images of possibly-forgotten-items kept popping into my head in random order: Baking powder? Scone recipe? Passport? Camera battery charger? Pandeiro tuning key? Bikini? Long ethernet cable? Portuguese dictionary? Favorite surdo strap?

In between those little spasms of doubt, I saw the winding trail of my strange gypsy life over the past three years, the good and the bad. (Short version for those just catching up: I started percussion three years ago; it immediately took over my life. and two years ago, I quit my PhD resarch-biology career to go to Brazil for six months to study percussion. I got back to the US in March and ever since have been driving up and down the West Coast playing with different groups. Now I'm headed back to Brazil.)

It feel like at least five years have gone by in the last six months:

The time I lived the Blue House.... the huge airy house with the kitchen full of housemates - carpenters, philosophers, bartenders, artists - and the deck with the grand view of Lake Washington. I took my first tentative steps at teaching then; and led my first parade, painted all in silver, head to toe.

Then all summer playing with the Lions of Batucada! (in Portland) That was one of the best years of my life. I lived first in the Crack House of musicians and Cuban artists, and then in the magical Chinese Medicine House with Ana, Kendra, Benjamin, and Rosie the dog. I got up every day at 6am to brush and feed the Arabian horses Pele and Bass....

Then the long road trip to California Brasil Camp; studying and playing music all day and all night, and sleeping under the stars at night.

I lived in Oakland after that, studying repinique with Jorge Alabe. And driving in my beloved Forester wherever I wanted, every day, a fresh trip to somewhere new.

Two weeks ago I returned to Seattle. Finally went through all my possessions and discarded virtually all of them. Loaded up on hand drum lessons (conga and timbal), taught a little bit, and enjoyed the last sunshine that Seattle had to offer. Then the rains started and away I went again.


.... I don't really know what I am doing or why I feel compelled to return to Brazil, why I feel so compelled to continue to work on percussion and music and to wander so far and wide for it. Sometimes it just seems obsessive and pointless. But so what; the only real point to life, anyway, to it is to enjoy the moment and to be with the people that you love being with, and music allows me to do that. I look back on my five "years" that occurred in just one summer, and realize how rich my life has become, how full every month is of new experiences and new friends. In each month this year, more happened to me, and I learned more and saw more, than in entire years of my previous life.

So much of this experience has hinged around friendship...I lost 2 friends in the process of chasing music, but I think I made about 98 new ones, so I guess I am coming out ahead in the game. And the 98 new ones have confirmed my ideas of what friendship is, and what it can be.

***
So I lay there thinking it all over. And petting my wonderful little cat (curled up on my feet) as much as I could, apologizing to her for leaving her once more. (I am leaving her in very good hands.)

But in the end I got to New York, and, after a mere 3 hours in the longest airport shuttle ride in history (I was the very last person unloaded out of the 15-person shuttle), reached my hostel. But the shuttle ride was worth it just as a city tour. Manhattan is its very glittering best on rainy nights, when all the brilliant neon lights on those long, long avenues are reflected in every raindrop in every direction. It is such a beautiful city (and boy, that shuttle sure drove every inch of it!)

For just $35 I have a private room in the Central Park Hostel! I'm kind of amazed at my housing luck since I just found the place online last night - and first off, who knew you could get a hostel dorm bed for $35 in Manhattan (they have cheaper ones, too); and second, through some fluke, nobody else is in my dorm room tonight. Got four beds and a desk all to myself, and there's free wireless, and a full kitchen downstairs.

It was 9:30pm by the time I got to the hostel and I was dead tired and very hungry, but my rule #1 in a new city is "Make yourself go out to meet your musician friend, no matter how tired you are" so I raced out to take a cab to Annette's Brazilian/Latin jazz gig in the East Village. And yup, I was so glad I'd gone. Her band, StringBeans, was wonderful - a rich and pure Latin jazz of a kind that only started to open up for me at Brazil Camp. Annette spotted me in the audience and dedicated a great baiao to me (!), then I sat in with them on surdo, along with a BRILLIANT repinique player (Glenn) - wished I'd had my pandeiro... - and afterwards, Glenn & I had a great talk about Brazil and teaching and mestres and escolas and blocos and hostels and.... We seemed to be only a little way into Glenn's great story about when his rock band was stranded in a Leipzig hostel with a pack of naive Polish teenagers, when it turned out it was already way past midnight and Annette was already honking the horn to drive me all the way back to the Upper West Side. Dizzy with fatigue by then - and starvation, since American didn't feed me anything on the flight - but hey, now I've played in Manhattan! And I've got two invitations to play in two different groups (maracatu and samba) in Manhattan's Halloween Parade, another invite to play in a school group thing, and info on the big bateria in town that meets Thursdays, and a lead on a possible apartment, and another lead on practice space. And: new friends.

SO FAR SO GOOD.

last days

I'm in the final stages of prepping for my 5 month stay in Brazil - I leave the Pacific Northwest tomorrow, first for a ten-day stint in New York City, then straight to Rio from there.

This'll be my fourth trip to Brazil, and my second full Carnaval season. I've already outstripped all of my teachers in terms of sheer time logged in Brazil; now I want to take it up another level. Last season was difficult, lonely, and amazing all at once. This year I'm hoping for less of the "difficult, lonely" part, now that I know more Portuguese and have friends there, and even more of the "amazing" part. This year I won't be living alone; I'll be with friends. And this year I want to play with a Rio escola, if I can, and go back to Salvador... and visit Recife at last. I'm hoping that I will be in a musical position now where I can comprehend even more of what I'm seeing. And I'm so looking forward to seeing all my Bangalafumenga friends again, from my 70-person bloco (drum group) in Rio.

I'm also aware, though, this time, of the good things that Seattle has to offer. Every day, these last two weeks, I've been soaking in all the good parts: The serene quiet - just a car going by now and then, a crow calling. Great big lungfuls of clean, clean rain-washed air. The distant mountains ringing the horizon. The lush greenness everywhere - trees lining every street, yards overflowing with flowers. Beautiful little houses all in a row (and not a one of them behind a barbed-wired-topped iron fence with a 24-hour security guard). Being able to saunter down the street with an ipod dangling from one hand, a laptop from the other, nice jewelry around my neck, cash in my pocket, and never worrying about getting mugged. And the APPLES! The markets full of bins and bins of fresh fall apples! The CHEDDAR CHEESE! I never realized how much I love apples and cheddar cheese until they were rare, exotic, and expensive luxury imports.

Blending in. Nobody staring at me. Being able to have real conversations (in English) with my friends.

On the other hand, it sure is getting gray and rainy here.... and I miss the music, I miss the all night thunderous open-hearted parties, everybody always dancing, never just standing and watching; I miss the extravagantly warm greetings of bear-hugs and double kisses; and the blazing sun and the wide, wide beach.

ok, gotta go pack now, gotta say goodbye to some friends.