Back again

The camping trip, after a number of setbacks, was a huge success. Briefly:
bad -- punctured tire, switching campsites, grumpy nieghbours, too much driving.
good -- the food. the hike. the location (cheers, chris). the drum circles. singalongs. the food. the folks.

And now it's done. Difficult to return to the "real" world, if that's what you call this. Having spent most of my working hours entertaining myself inside my head by elaborating trip plans and practicing songs I would sing, I was stuck this week for something to occupy my mind. I wrote a couple tankas which ended up serving as a sort of catharsis -- I wrote each one about a girl that's had an impact on my life.

A tanka is a poem like a haiku with a syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 (which adds up to 31, no doubt). I wrote fifteen stanzas in all. Here are a few:

TC
it's hard to believe
the games that i used to play
like a school bully
pulling hair, twisting arms means
"i want you to be my friend"

PP
part of me regrets,
but part of me won't forgive;
some of me wants to
see who you are today, but
most of me would rather not.

AC
so pathetically,
you have tied your numb self to
a loveless, clinging,
wife-beating asshole; you got
exactly what you wished for.

MH
because you saw my
semi-secret insides first
you contributed
to the construction of what
was later to become me.

CH
a goddess's grip
moves your pen around shapes of
unbelievable
grace and humility; you
draw fiction but capture truth.

Les Claypool show in Toronto

So the doors opened at 6pm. Gunner and I resolved to leave Max Thain's place at 6:00 to hop on the subway-- the Phoenix was a block away from the Sherbourne stop (which is at 420 Bloor St, I'll have you know). When we arrived, the concert hall was dark, and packed. We huddled near the stage at stage-left, and the band came on almost immediately after.

Les came out in shades and a cowboy cap and made a quip about playing short shows in quick succession as though he were in Vegas. A saxophonist came out and stood at our end of the stage wearing red face paint, devil horns and a mean grimace. He kept doing monkey antics during the show-- shaking his face and the like. He had tenor and baritone saxes; the tenor was hooked up through some sort of processor that made it sound like he was playing guitar solos.

The sitarist on the opposite end of the stage was a woman wearing a long, bright blue wig, Elton John glasses and a goofy lady hat. She would sometimes play through an autowah pedal, super funky. She also used a synthesizer that's played by waving and moving one's hands through an electric field. Weird. Neat.

Les totally owned (that is to say, pwnzed) the band; neat to watch the cues, as he nodded to and communicated with his bandmates, telling them when to solo, cueing when to come back. Huge grins on everyone as they played with him and watched him do what he does-- a bass looks large, intimidating and uncomfortable in many people's hands, but each one seemed natural in his. His hands moved effortlessly doing what seemed difficult if not improbable. He changed basses often and hats/masks just as regularly. After the upright string bass (which is just a neck, doesn't have a body) was set up, he came out on stage with the pig mask. When his historic four string was out, he was wearing a pompadour.

There was also a single-stringed instrument he played, where the neck looked like 2x2 plywood, which he played by slapping the string with a wand or drumstick. Instead of a machinehead the string was attached at the top to a giant lever, and pitch was changed by moving the lever as he slapped with the wand. For this he was wearing an ape mask.

There were two drummers, which I didn't really realize (from my vantage point I couldn't see the back half of the stage very clearly) until the dueling drum solos. One of the drummers had vibraphones and I think a xylophone too, and played those often. In the middle of one song Les snuck a bit of "Southbound Pachyderm" in a different rhythm, without losing the pace of the jam; it was funny to see one drummer in the background laughing and shrugging, seeming to say "I don't know how to play this one!"

Gunner remarked after the show, "Only one song I knew, and they didn't play it." =)

It was an amazing experience. Les Claypool is a magician, and I'm glad he didn't just stick to the sea and instead decided to share his genius with all of us. Be sure to check him out next time he comes through our little province.

Thanks so much to AM for hooking me up with the tickets.