Ah yes, another year passes and here it is time again to update the blog; or at least to begin adding more of what was, what is and perhaps what may be for this next year. Welcome.
I must say the last quarter of the last year 2011 was quite an amazing one to say the least; especially the last month leading up to the Christmas holidays. That was when a girl-friend and I took a 5 day round trip to New York City. The girl-friend wanted to make a trip to a destination she’d not been to before; ever. She decided to ask mme to be her guide, roommate and dinner date as I was the first homeboy she’s ever met that would take her. I knew my way around of course so I had set up the itinerary as far as the day, time, and place not to mention how long we’d be at every hour of our trip. A week or so before it began the whole trip was in the bag.
The hotel we stayed at was in Little Italy. We were right in the heart of the city and closer than most to the best Italian restaurants this side of Italy. The hustle and bustle of this part of NYC has always been one of mmy favourites. It's so vibrant with everything international and we were in the thick of it.
Suffice it to say that it was a pretty exciting time for both of us. I hadn’t visited mmy hometown in too many years so I was really looking forward to seeing old haunts while discovering new ones. I also wanted to take in a concert of mmusic we’d not see too many other places including where we now live. ‘The Kitchen,’ located in the village was the venue. There’s a photo of the gig later on in this blog.
On this trip, our first and only, we did a lot of what she had dreamed of and I was the mouthpiece so to speak. As part of this ride down memory lane, I got to visit a childhood friend I’d not seen for over forty years. That visit in and of itself was worth the whole trip; at least for mme. More on this part of the story will unfold on another day in future.
In any case we visited Rockefeller Center - after dark of course. Talk about a throng of moving humanity; or I should say trying to move humanity. As you can imagine it was a crazy, raging river and stagnant lakes of bodies but we both loved the flow of energy that was all around us. It was like a huge party waiting to count down from 2011 to 2012. Here’s a photo of that part of the evening:
Earlier in the day we were walking up Seventh Avenue when we heard the pops of plastic buckets and a great funk drummer doing his best imitation of Bernard Purdie. Needless to say we found this pair of pounders surrounded by a crowd of dozens smiling and moving to their beats. We stopped to listen, to take photos and a video or two; They made Andy Warhol proud.
One other interesting stop along the way was another curious scene. I think it was the same avenue, 7th we were walking on when I noticed this fascinating view. The decor covered the whole window which was about sixteen feet long and about the same height. As a matter of fact I was so taken by the initial view that we just had to go inside; and that we did. Here’s what we saw:
Needless to say the whole place was covered in sewing machines and merchandise relating to not only sewing but women’s apparel from clothes, to shoes to whatever’s, were their main selling points. As you can see, one woman lost her head over the whole idea of shopping in this store; can’t say as I blame here either I wanted to buy one of the sewing machines but thought twice when I knew I had to carry it the rest of the way.
This next shot was taken from an audience point of view while attending a gig at ‘The Kitchen.’
The sounds were quite intricate as was the score I’d imagine. There were three different conductors. Each had their composition performed by the same group of players. One player was a guy on an oscillator; another performed on garbage can tops and variously filled goblets that make tones when he rubbed the top edges of each glass. Then of course the string players not only played their instruments in the traditional fashion, they also scraped their bows like hack saws. At points they picked and plucked with any number of fingers along the fingerboard including the undersides of the body of the instrument.
There was also a woman, one of the composers but not a conductor who used a computer for the whole of her piece. She was sitting and moving her head while smiling at different instrument entrances, exits and movements of each player including herself. All in all I enjoyed the hell out of it while the girl-friend as the dancer she said she was, was quite put off; bored to death ‘n couldn’t wait to leave. She said she couldn’t figure out how to dance to this band. Funny girl…
So back we are; arriving a little tired as most ‘vacations’ go. The woman dropped mme off at mmy home and I’ve settled back into the next phase of poetry, paintings and stories inspired by the trip. I’mm looking forward to a return this year but first a visit to the west coast and Europe is in order.
Who knows what those will inspire? You’ll find out; just keep attuned to the next post.
Thanks for the visit. MM
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