how to make a girl happy when she has some form of the flu

if that girl is me, it's pretty easy. All you need are a couple hundred of these:

I was practically giddy, as I was coughing uncontrollably.

Distribution ideally will begin next week... once I find the right salesperson.

last night's idea

stand at the horrifying intersection of Cerrillos and St. Francis for 8 hours with a video camera and document it

these are some photos from the internet of the intersection:



Here's a local blog about it.

two of the macedonian songs we'll rehearse tomorrow

I'm in a new Macedonian folk band in Santa Fe-- two voices and a tambura, as well as percussion, and the possibility of tastefully adding accordion, kaval, bass, and more as necessary. I would really love to have a zurna on at least one song. But that's challenging to find in Santa Fe.

We have a whole book of repertoire we're developing, and these are two of the songs we're working on tomorrow. Tamo Daleko Voda Mi Dotece:



I really like this song. I think it's lovely, and it's the first one we've developed a non-traditional higher vocal harmony for. The translation is as follows:

Water was flowing from a well and at the well a "hanuma" (Turkish woman) was bleaching her woven cloth.

A young bachelor approached and asked her,

"Do you sell the cloth and for how much?"

"Even if I sell it I would not sell it to you."

"Do you sell your face, and for how much? I will become a Turk and will convert my religion just to marry you."

"Whether you convert or not, I don't love you."

This is one of the others we just learned. "Se Navali Sar Planina." It's simple, but very traditional and exemplary of Macedonian vocal music:



The translation is:

There were heavy snows on Sar mountain
Three shepards got caught
The first shepard pleaded with it
"Release me, Sar mountain,
I have a wife who will mourn me"
The second shepard pleaded with it
"Release me, Sar mountain
I have a sister who will mourn me"
The third shepard pleaded with it
"Release me Sar mountain
I have a mother who will mourn for me"
The Sar mountain answered,
"A wife mourns for six weeks,
a sister mourns for three years,
but a mother mourns to the grave."

Like I said, it's folk music. Greek and Albanian music are my favorite generally, but I love it all, especially Bulgarian and Macedonian and Turkish and Romani music from a variety of countries. Many songs I know from the Balkans are about war, or sex, or love, or poverty, or struggle, or transience, or communism, or the woods, etc.

I think my absolute favorite music is the traditional vocal music from Northern Greece and Southern Albania called Epirot music (Epirot music is broader than the polyphonic vocal stuff, and often involves clarinet). This is from Southern Albania, and it's just one straightforward version of the music I'm talking about:



I listen to this Albanian radio station a few times each week. It's good when it's folk, but occasionally you'll hear generic autotuned Western-sounding pop music in Albanian. I just discovered the full wealth of Epirot music that exists on the internet. If this particular music interests you, just google "Epirus." Alternatively, I'm always happy to share recordings I have. Just email me.

whispers of things i should be scribbling in my notebooks

This is my bicycle:
It's an old, rickety, Peugeot, and I was informed on Sunday at the local bike cooperative that it is from the 1960s. I didn't realize my bike was that old. This makes me want to work a little harder to ride it as long as I can make it survive.

This was my Valentine's day:

Two girlfriends and I made valentines to old loves and the things we hate about the world, and then we burned them. I also got more practice reading tarot cards. The valentine effigies weren't my idea-- I'm actually not that jaded about such things, but I do always like a little bit of fire.

**

I rode my bike tonight, half drunk down a bike trail, by the light of the moon. It was a dear friend's birthday, and this required a gathering at our favorite local microbrewery, as it usually does.

I appreciated the aesthetics of the nearby warehouses that line the rail trail, as I often do, but I noted that the absence of the sun made them seem quite a bit more menacing. There was no one, nothing, no cars around, just dark and me and my bike at night, and as always I find this recurring event beautiful, invigorating, and slightly nihilistic. The stars are always gorgeous without the city lights, and the air was fair outside, except for an inexplicable, subtle smoky haze.

I rode fast by the empty Railrunner station, past the barbed wire fenced lot of New Mexico State cars. I saw a lonely biker sitting at a bus stop. The buses had long stopped running. The absence of the sun made me pedal faster, instead of pointedly smiling and saying hello, as I normally would try.

***

I signed a non-disclosure statement when I started working for the corporate-reincarnated version of my collegiate alma mater. Does this mean that I can't talk about the rapport I have with students-- the ongoing solidarity we find in cigarettes, coffee, art, and guilty pleasures like lady gaga?

I could entertain the wild past, but not here or now.

Every day is an unexpected journey somewhere. I believe I need to fill my blank notebook pages with the enormous experiences and absurdities and profundities of my past five and a half years in this bizarre adobe town.

Tonight at dinner the CSF alum and faculty talked about the barracks. Much of the CSF campus was composed of barracks from a 1940s army hospital in Santa Fe. Art studios, music studios, our cafeteria, rehearsal spaces, residences for the Christian Brothers and more were housed in the barracks, and the soul of their history, and the history students created over decades were fodder for many a great creation, memory, and experience.

***

I'm having European flashbacks like a junkie. Specifically Balkan/Mediterranean ones. Specific places, moments, tastes, smells, infiltrate my senses during the most mundane moments of my day. I find myself eying my passport weekly, daydreaming about the possible. Trying to conceive of a localized border cross that would satisfy my wanderlust, and perpetual need to escape the American paradigm.

And the taste of Bulgarian feta cheese on the train ride to Athens haunts me.

***

I walk St. Michael's Drive every day. I cross it by foot or by bike, and wonder if my life will someday be taken by one of those egotistical speeding oblivious Western cars. I'd like to believe I'm a cowgirl, but the boots don't cut it. I need a horse or a pickup truck. I need to drive like a maniac. No deal.

I have been staying awake contributing to some non-linear document defining vision and implementation of the St. Michael's project. It's a vivid daydream masquerading as a campaign plan. The project will center around a public space in the midst of desolate centrally-located commercial space that will be a community arts center, and a hub and catalyst for much more. There is much to be said here (and I've been painstakingly working to articulate it all) but it's late, and I will save the full story for another time.

monday's mantra

was "your problems are white, middle class problems"

it's surprisingly helpful

making bones

I went to Albuquerque today to have lunch with my friend and repentant Weather Underground co-founder Mark Rudd, and my new friend, artist Naomi Natale.

Naomi is the founder of the One Million Bones project. One Million Bones is a fundraising installation responding to the ongoing contemporary genocides and armed conflicts of the world. Naomi is networking with advocacy groups and people across the country to create one million bones that will be installed on the National Mall in Spring of 2013. She receives boxes of homemade bones mailed to her office from across the world, and she also holds daily bone-making workshops in Albuquerque with various groups of people, including school children. Naomi encourages people to sponsor the production of the bones by donating $5 per bone, and she is donating everything she raises to several NGOs that address genocide in various ways.

After conversing for several hours, Mark, Naomi and I made bones. Naomi encourages interested people to host bone-making parties, and after having participated in the activity of bone-making, I think it is an interesting and effective way of inciting dialogue and raising awareness of the issues of genocide, which do largely go ignored in our comparatively comfortable nation.

For the record, I'm still on the fence about art with political goals. I feel like I'll be sitting on this fence for a while drinking tea, contemplating it all. But regardless, I do really like the One Million Bones project, and I appreciate the enthusiasm, intelligence, and passion of Naomi even more.

Here are some blurry cellphone photos of the One Million Bones office and the bones we made.

the bones we made:

the rest:

late night folk in santa fe

art dreams

Every single night this week I've had some strange, vivid dream about making or watching or participating in art in different contexts and places. This is unusual for me. Last night I dreamt of a gallery space in a shopping mall. Maybe it would be more realistically called an installation space, or an alternative museum space. I can't imagine that one would be able to sell the experience there, although there was a bizarre gift shop next door. From the outside it looked as if a slightly disorganized house with every object of 1990s kitsch imaginable was installed in the space. As you entered, you realized that the living space was partitioned away from craft making areas, most of which the audience was not allowed to enter (although there was one exception in which a few paintings were perpetually added on to by the audience). The space was sparse when I entered it, and it quickly became very crowded. I had conversations with the artists behind the strange counter partition who were operating what looked like some kind of elven christmas craft factory. They firmly informed me that I was not allowed to cross the partition. I enjoyed conversations with a couple of audience members, one of whom reminded me of a friend of mine who used to curate alternative art shows in her back yard. We left the space together and set out on an adventure. We were in a city that was conducive to adventures. I might have commented that the installation reminded me of the work of Meow Wolf.