Pining for the fjords
I'm in Boston visiting family and friends. Here's how I traveled:
From little sleep (less than 3 hours)
to L's car
to two airplanes
to a shuttle
to another car
to my parents' house.
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I remembered to bring my toothbrush.
The recent theme of meeting people I know while traveling continues. I was on the shuttle from the airport when a girl stood by the empty seat in front of me. She didn't sit down, just stood there staring at me.
Turns out it was my second cousin, on leave from Iraq. We talked about many things, including the vibe in Tikrit post-surge, the different qualities of sandstorm, and birthdays (hers is the day before mine).
And yeah, my wonder-niece kicked my sorry butt at Guitar Hero. Looks like all my time spent shredding in Berklee practice rooms doesn't come to much when rubber meets road.
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There was a pitch-perfect dinner party tonight at Vlindinhauer's in celebration of my recent thirty somethingth birthday.
The cast:
Vlindinhauer Haverhast
Vlindinhauer's wife, M
Mr. Why
Sabitathica
The fare:
The best crab cakes I've ever tasted, potatoes (roasted & seasoned), perfect asparagus, and delicious cherry tomatoes
A wine called EVIL
A delicious, decadent, deliriously pink, strawberry cake for dessert (pictured)
Turkish coffee (also pictured)
Sliced baguette & olive oil pre-dinner
Several other fine wines
Armagnac
The conversation:
Many improbable thoughts were articulated this night, and several phrases never before given voice in the English language were uttered. A few that come to mind:
Apes on dulcimers
Trouble on the poop-deck (more on this below)
"I feel like Susan Dey"
You're familiar, I assume, with the dinner party tradition where you foretell your future by interpreting, Rorschach-style, the patterns in the grounds of your Turkish coffee? Well, M suggested that as we were all gathered in celebration of, among other things, the anniversary of my birth, it would be my future which would be prophesied by those present.
The auguries:
M: A griffin standing above a Klu Klux Klan member; Sardinia; a fish in a tree.
Vlindinhauer: Three strings of lime-flesh toppelmoore gwerding the tops of the Totten trees. A cloudful flocking of grimgraff is seeping along the Z-way towards Hollywotton Manor. (You'll have to forgive me. I may have gotten a few of the words wrong with this one.)
Sabitathica: A forest stands between two alien beings who are almost facing each other. Behind one is an unfamiliar cityscape, the other holds two living, squirming creatures - one in each of its two upraised hands.
Mr. Why: Mr. Why said that it would be, if I understood correctly, improper for him to answer as long as we were all still sitting in the dining room...
The music:
The idea arose to create enough music to fill an eight record - 16 sides of vinyl - box set. A bold move for a group which has never in fact played together before. And we got pretty close too, except that almost none of it was actually recorded. The blueprint goes something like this:
Side one - tuning and improvisation
Sides two through five - several versions of In the Court of the Crimson King, all unspeakably brilliant
Side six - a song by and/or about Shakespeare, Browning, Marlow, Crowley and Kilimanjaro
Side seven - improvisation and intermission
Side eight - second intermission and improvisation
Side nine - an avant-garde reconstruction of the blues piece "The poop-deck"
Side ten - poop-deck improvisation
Sides eleven and twelve - a song about and/or to the rising red moon
Sides thirteen through sixteen - acknowledgment, repentance, and absolution.
The ensemble:
Vlindinhauer Haverhast: acoustic bass guitar
Mr. Why: acoustic guitar
Sabitathica: acoustic guitar
M: percussion, sampled animal sounds, and things that go bump in the night
There was also some live solo music from Mr Why, along with some archived favorites from Vlindinhauer and myself.
And yes, there was Opeth.
The ablution:
This being Summer Solstice, there was the obligatory midnight ablution in the sweet Atlantic, which in case you're wondering, was ridiculously cold.
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Red Sox at Fenway tomorrow.
