Samba gypsy

OK, here I am in Seattle. The first thing I said to a friend here was "Oh my god, there is one solid enormous cloud that is covering the entire sky from one side clear to the other! There's no blue at all! Where's the sun?" He just said "Oh dear." He knows I'm planning to stay in the Pacific Northwest all winter, and yes, it is going to kill me!

So quiet here... I couldn't hear anything when I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep last night... So dark and silent. I realized there was no sound of a ceiling fan; I couldn't fall asleep without it. Outside, the air so clean and cold. I hear crows and robins... no kiskadees! I can't get warm; I've been shivering constantly.

It is not easy starting up again after such a long gap. I had to go out on a mega-errand yesterday:

Call bank about the fraudulent charges on my ATM card when it was stolen at the Sambodromo.
Apartment hunting like crazy, nothing yet
Work like hell on that NOAA job...
Work like hell on my job talk for the University of Portland on Monday... (the job would start in August)
Work like hell on my syllabus for my Univeristy of Washington job that starts the next Monday....
Go get my hair cut so I don't look like a total beach bum at my UP job interview...
Call insurance company to re-insure my car before I could drive to the mall to...
Shop like hell to buy a set of job interview clothes (I didn't have anything but miniskirts & a pair of filthy jeans!)
jeez! I had to buy a bazillion things! classy black pants and shoes, dressy tops... practically like a real grown-up.
Buy a cell phone & sign up for a plan

I spent almost $500! Clothes, shoes, haircut, cell phone. Damn. Takes so much just to get your feet under you. So strange to be diving back into the American commercial world... shopping... planning for job interviews... working, working, working. So strange to be immersed in this calm, clean, smooth world, where everybody speaks English, where everybody stops at red lights, where I can carry an ipod or even a laptop on the street and nobody will steal it. Nobody is wearing bikinis! Nobody at all!!! People are tall (whew! suddenly I'm not a freak!) Everybody's wearing fleece jackets. Guys have beards!! I haven't seen those in so long that they look like a deformity. The world is grey.... except... bright patches of daffodils and crocuses in the parks, and nobody has stolen them, and the parks are so impossibly clean; not a single Skol beer can on the ground.

Everyone seems very quiet. Nobody asks me where I'm from.

Meanwhile the Brazilian music world is receding from me, speeding away in an eerie and terrifying way. I can feel it just slipping away. I miss Monobloco, I miss Mocidade, I miss Banga. I miss my friends - Chris, Olivia, Jason, Eric, Nana, Avron, Vincent.... I don't have any active bands here in Seattle; and I'll be here such a brief time that it's not really practical to get a new band started. The local band I started with, VamoLa, has changed so much in my 2 years of travelling that it no longer feels like something I have any connection to. It seems like something from my long-ago past.

I have eerie, disorienting flickers of thinking "well, that's it, I had my adventure, it's over, and now I'm not a musician any more." But I don't want it to be over. I went through so much to change my life and I am determined that it will never be over, that I will never sink back into the solitary, silent, working-dog life. I'll live in the US this year, yes, I'll get a job, I'll work hard at it, I'll even love it. (I'm actually really excited about the UP thing. And my job talk is going to be great! All about whales!) But it won't be permanent. My plan is to work hard one year, earn money, feel like a productive member of society for a change (I've actually been missing that); then switch back to writing and music and travelling next year. I am both a scientist and an artist now; and I love both sides, and I will find a way to balance them.

There'll be an adjustment, sure. Last year I found I needed to take a couple months clear off playing when I got back to the US. The musical shock coming back here can be so great that maybe it is best to just take some time off and re-equilibrate. But soon enough Seattle's Solstice Parade rolls around, the summer solstice, and I know I'll suddenly be thinking "If I had a bunch of peacock and pheasant feathers, I could make a huge headdress... and I could join the nude biker brigade and paint myself like a leopard!" and somehow, someway, there is going to be a repinique involved.

There are great opportunities, and great people, everywhere; the trick is just to find them.

Jason da Festa told me recently, "When you find yourself thinking, 'but there's no scene here for x-y-z' - nobody in town doing the stuff you love - that just means, you've got to make the scene. Create the scene yourself." I went through this whole adventure, two years travelling, just so I could gain the skills to do just that. Two and a half years ago, VamoLa's music director (my old drum teacher who I described a couple posts ago) had just announced he was leaving Seattle; I could see what was going to happen, could see that the "scene" was too dependent on him and was going to fall apart without him. Which it promptly did. So I decided to go to Brazil and develop the skills I needed to make it happen myself.

Now I just have to decide what I want to do. And where I want to do it. It's up to me.

I'm signing off here from the Rio Stories blog. I'll keep it updated now and then with news reports that I hear from Rio, like the enredo announcements that I just posted; and I'm going to post some more info about what I learned - some more movies, and a series of transcriptions, including Monobloco's entire caixa repertoire. But obviously, there'll be no more personal stories from Rio for a while.

Instead I'm moving to a new blog that will continue the stories about my samba travels, but in the US and in other countries. I'll be playing samba in several West Coast cities this year, and also with trips to visit samba groups in New Orleans, New York, London (I hope!), possibly Tokyo, and California Brazil Camp. I'll keep updates going on all of that. I spent 7 months last year driving around the US playing samba; and it was one of the most vibrant experiences I've ever had. There is a hell of a lot happening outside Brazil and I will be part of it, & I'll keep writing about it. Starting off: Lions of Batucada, tomorrow in Portland.

The new blog will be:
sambagypsy.blogspot.com

One more thing: one of the great pleasures of writing this blog has been the people I've met through it. Some people I just get emails from, from all kinds of cities I've never been to, all over the world. And some of you I've even been able to meet in person when we crossed paths in Brazil. (hi, Gisele, Mick, Simeon, Rob, JP, Emily, Avron, Bay Area Boys, & everybody else!) It has been a huge pleasure to meet so many new friends in the course of this musical adventure. You Brits, I'll be coming to London this summer to visit you all. And you've all got a crash pad whenever you want it, in Seattle, Portland and at California Brazil Camp too, if you ever want to make the grand trek out to the West Coast. C'mon on over, it's a big beautiful world!

beijos & abracos
Kathleen