OCG VII - Day 1

Day 1
Awake multiple times in the night.  Many snoring types.  Also, someone apparently had an interesting nightmare as well.  Aware that my back is going to hate me at the end of this week, though sleeping on my back alleviates this a bit.  Too bad I prefer the side.

9:15 - Waking at 6:00.  Mad dash to the auditorium for 7:15 sitting at 6:50.  I realize on waking that the previous day, when I had cleaned out and moved forty-something chairs to the auditorium, that I had forgotten to arrange the chairs.  Arrived, realized that there was nothing I could do, as people had already begun to arrive.  Long sitting.

Silence during breakfast.

The hot water heater in this cabin says "Never run out of hot water again."  It lies.

Changing strings.  Inaugural meeting at 11:00.

2:20 - Good opening meeting.  My own personal comments are that I've been brought to the course by the future (in reference to the fact that I've been essentially working with a mind towards this course since 2011, before it was even official), and that my personal aims are:  1) to ensure that all arrive at the course safely, 2) to support the Orchestra in whatever mode I am needed, 3) to ensure that all depart the course safely.

RF's own comments will be replicated on his own diary (link leads to home page of DGM, where it is to be found), but two things stick out:  first, a reference to Tom's observation in Mexico this past February that "We must bring this [the Procession] into war zones", and that Boston and New York were in fact that very thing; and a comment about these performances and demonstrations being useful for three generations.

The pre-lunch work being called; "high flyers" are to meet in the auditorium with Curt at 12:15, "middle flyers" at 12:30 with Sandra in the Movements Hall, and "low flyers" with Victor at 12:30.  A bit of hesitation on my own part, as I know where I want to be, but with the quality of players around, I'm a bit unsure of whether I can hang.  As we're all leaving the auditorium, Victor asks me where I plan to go; on seeing my hesitation, he rather directly says, "Go to the high flyers' meeting".

Back in the auditorium.  Curt hands the duties of "director" to Fernie, who calls for circulation.  Some interesting stuff--passing of sounds that are post-tonal.  Different keys are called.  Some repertoire:

Eye of the Needle (x2)
Third Relation (this gets some apprehensive looks around the circle)
Red
Driving Force
Asturias

Discussion in between each piece.

6:25 - Tea at 4:00, work with Frank at 5:00.

Running repertoire with some folks at 8:00.

RF giving a pretty serious mind pickler at roughly the same time, but working in 20 minute chunks, so I head over for 8:50.  I'm not able to pick up the exact pattern he's giving, but I am able to figure out the idea of running variations of the First Primary and First Secondary exercises across the strings of the fretboard.  I watch him give maybe 6 or 7 patterns, and then he rather gleefully puts them all together at the same time, and then adds a bass skiffle part, so that there are 5 disparate parts dementedly clashing against each other.  And also a solo break for Fernie.  [As the week progresses, this will actually make a lot of sense in a backward way.]

9:30 - An intense opening OCG rehearsal, roughly 40 minutes.  A clear tie to Frank's work earlier in the day.  Afteward, an announcement for repertoire work "if you see yourself doing this".

10:30 - Late arrivals.  No repertoire run after all (most of the course showed up), but the notion of procession chords is presented, first in A minor, and then shifting to A harmonic minor.  Zithering around.

11:00 - Teaching Where is the Nurse? bass line to multiple people; this gets somewhat derailed by flighty attention (people wanting to do everything), but gets back on course late in the Movements hall.  Some other repertoire run as well, to check in.

Missing Ieva.  To bed around 1:00 am.

OCG VII - Day (-1) -> 0

Day (-1)

Busy day of pre-project necessities.  Ieva leaves in the morning, giving me time to finish packing in time for Victor to drop by and pick up my bag, guitar, and items purchased through me for an incoming Crafty.  After this, heading off to meet with Becky and pick up an air mattress.  Catching up over Indian food, and then off to get some hair removed from my head.  A stop by the grocery store for breakfast supplies, and back home.

Some more travel e-mails.  Cleaning.  Chris arrives from Connecticut just as I'm preparing to head to the laundromat for some necessary last minute stuff, and we head over together.  Plenty of discussion about jargon, what this project might be like, and general conversation.

Back to my place; some more organizing, and practicing with Chris until somewhere around midnight, interspersed with phone calls about incoming Crafties.  Victor graciously puts up two more Crafties that have flown in and could not secure a hotel room, which means that no one arriving to this course will have had to remain in the airport over night.

Some more discussion, and then we head to the airport to pick up Christina, who is flying in at 1:00 am.  Back to my place around 1:45, and we all quickly turn in for the night.

Day 0  

7:00 am:  wake up, shower.  Sitting at 8 am with Christina, Chris, and myself.  Erin arrives to my house as we're eating breakfast.  Some catching up and visiting over coffee, and then a quick clean-up.  Packing and piling into Chris's car, and on the road at 10:00.

Constant texts and calls.  Part of my job for this course.  Par for the course.

Arrival at Camp Caravan, approximately noon.  Dispatching to various rooms, busy work until the first van from the airport arrives.  All arrivals seem generally happy, and lots of good will all around.  I've managed to give myself a blister (and subsequently destroy it) in the first fifteen minutes through sweeping.

Lunch at 2:00.  Quiet.

More busy stuff.  Prepared the auditorium.  Some practicing.  Showed John H. and David L. the 16 Bar Exercise, part of Third Relation, and a touch of Where is the Nurse.  A bit of texting back and forth with Ieva, and keeping up to date with various travel issues.  Shooting shit with Tim and Curt.

Dinner at 8:00 in the tent we've rented for the course, with Erin as head chef.  Eggplant parmesan, which is delicious, and the first appearance on a course (reportedly) of salad dressing squerd, which is also tasty.  As we're eating, I see Dev scamper off, and then up at the house I can see Victor arrive, which means RF has also arrived--once Bill arrives, my duties as travel coordinator will be half-completed.  House stuff with Alex, and then 90 minutes of dishes.  Some more back and forth with Ieva, paying for strings, diary stuff at 11:20.

Physically uncomfortable.  Gave up pillow to Luigi because we ran out, bed to Jon because a top bunk is impossible for him.  Will be sleeping this week on a thin pad with my sitting pillow.  Not ideal, but oh well. 

Smorgasbord

A bit of everything today:

Some melancholy due to the Girl leaving for three weeks, but it's to record the next album with her group, so there's some pride in there as well.

A bit of shock and surprise as I realized that my aim for the OCG tour may have just fallen out of the sky onto my head.

And some intense gratitude as I'm working on travel arrangements for this project:  my proximity to the functioning of this tour, and being able to help, is already something to be thankful for.  But in addition to this, the fact that I've been getting peeks inside the factory, and have access to some of the higher workings of not just this but of a fair amount of "work" related goings-on. . . that's really something.  And that people let me in. . . funny to see what can come of knocking politely.

Clearly I was bored, too.

"I am curious what you people think the difference between love and passion is. Does one follow the other? I'm bored."

Passion has a sexual connotation to it, which implies: a) a temporary, or impermanent quality; b) the creative energy that sex carries, and that can be extraordinarily powerful in the moment, but which might not last past the present moment; c) the dissolution and loss of self in the moment, or the identification of the self with the object of one's passion. If we are too passionate, we disappear and turn away from the world.

 Love is not a sexual emotion, though sex and the creative energy can have a deep influence on it. It does not have the temporary quality that passion has; one could say that it has the ability to extend outside of ourselves, outside what we can immediately notice. It is also entirely without ego; instead of turning away and shrinking into our ego, when we are in love, we expand out, we feel bigger, and *experience* more around us, and possibly more than just this immediate moment holds. And, when we are truly in love, we can still be in touch with some real piece of ourselves, while being wholly free of ourselves and any control the ego might attempt to exert. In a very real sense, we sacrifice our selves in deference to something bigger than ourselves (a love binding two people, a love towards a higher reality, etceteras). And, by sacrificing it, we can really call it our own.

Like I even know what I'm talking about.  Pah.

Some interesting things seen, lately.

Last night was full of them:  a momentary bit of freedom, a glance of null, and an intimation that hearing may be for me an inherently visceral and body-based experience, as well as (or in opposition to) being an intellectual experience.

Odd revelations coming about.

And, love.

For posterity. . .

. . .What is the place of mysticism in the life of the atheist?  It's there, but where does it go, or where does it reside?

Maybe more on this later.

When I cook. . .

I usually have some idea in mind of what the meal might be; my habitual meals tend to be Asian in nature (and very regularly tend to be some sort of curry).  But I rarely have a specific recipe in mind until I put the first pan on the stove.  But there is a strong chance that it will involve garlic.

The kitchen is one of the most common areas for me to practice improvisation.  There are others, of course. The performance venue is a given, and so, too, is the sales floor.  The sexual act is also one, but as this isn't exactly an active area, I think it's best to leave that aside.  That is a different sort of improvisation, anyway, though an important one.

I have a peculiar style in the kitchen that always seems to surprise people:  I almost never measure quantities.  When constructing a soup, for instance, the general mode of operation is "a splotch of oil that is that big, twice as much garlic as most people I know, not quite this whole onion, and go".  Amounts are measured by how big it looks in the pan, or the physical feel of how much I've shaken out of this jar, or whether I decide to use the entire vegetable or just most of it.  It's a method that necessarily involves involvement with the process of the cooking; I am usually tasting things as they simmer and cook up until the moment it's done, adjusting on the fly as necessary.

Recipes do get used, especially when I am trying something for the first time, or when I am trying to remember the order of operations of a dish.  Conjuring a korma from nothing would be impossible without at least a general understanding of the spice content, or what oils to use, or whether this recipe has tomatoes or potatoes or milk or cream or cardamom or whether it's prepared in two pans or baked or seared or broiled. One must know the structure.

But once I've made a recipe once or twice, and sometimes before I've even made it through the recipe once, I begin to experiment, to try new things, to play around and see what else I can do.  This is often practical, especially when I am converting a recipe to a vegetarian cuisine--I won't use steak, but maybe this combination of mushrooms and eggplant will work instead--but other times it is simply the notion of curiousity.  What happens when I add this?  I'm not particularly fond of that, so perhaps this instead?

Sometimes the meal doesn't work.  But it usually does.  And sometimes magic actually does slip out of a pot onto a plate, and you can see just how beautiful it looks.

A friend recently said something about not cooking because she was single, and cooking for one is a bit of a drag.  As she said that, I found myself thinking about how I don't really know how to cook for one.  I can make a sandwich, of course, and prepare food specifically for myself to eat.

But I don't know how to cook for one, anymore:  I just end up with too much, instead.  I cook for more.