I Dreamed of California

"You should write about your travels."

Clemen Castro frowned at me from across a cafeteria table at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Nine months earlier I would never have dreamed I'd be discussing life over lattes, killing time with him before a Rossetti String Quartet concert. Our first meeting should have foreshadowed something musical:

"Play this song with me. It's in E minor. Can you do that?"
"Sure. You start, I'll follow."

So I started this post Nov. 14, but only just finished today, Nov. 24. Some writer am I! Life is but a dream, escaping too quickly...

 It's Wednesday night and I'm back in Winnipeg, back to reality. A week ago I flew to Los Angeles, initially to realize an idea: to collaborate with a talented musician I met briefly in Manila last winter. The end result: discovering family I didn't know I had, and sharing some amazing experiences with someone who is now one of my closest friends living across the world. Though some of my friends live as far away as Germany, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Columbia, Mexico, Manila or Singapore they have all shared with me precious moments in time that I will never forget.

The idea:

"We should collaborate."
"Yes, I would love to."

Months later:

"I'll be visiting family in LA."
"That's closer to Winnipeg than Manila - what if I fly down and jam with you?"
"Hey, we have a plan! And I got us a gig."

"Mom, I'm going to LA."
"Call your dad's cousins and tell them you'll be in town."
"We have family IN Los Angeles?!?"

"Come and stay with me, dear, and meet the family!"
"Okay, Aunt Jean!"

Wow.

I landed, found Aunt Jean, lost my luggage, texted Clemen. We collected him from a street corner and went to camp out at Aunt Jean's place for a few days so we could practice for our Friday gig.

Jean's son Jim, his wife, and their son came over and we practiced some more. I've never met such a family-loving, outgoing 13-year-old! Or such warm and welcoming cousins who opened their hearts and homes to total strangers!

From Canada to California: there will always be Mazur Sisters!

Thursday, more practice after a leisurely breakfast with Aunt Jean. We hammered out a set list and recorded a couple tunes on a Zoom H4n I'd borrowed from a friend: Clem's own Canto de Maria Clara (words by Jose Rizal), and Someone I Know by Margo Guryan. That evening while waiting for my cousin Bill to take us to a concert, I made an important discovery: my musical friend is also a master chess player!

Looks harmless but there's a bloody medieval battle going on!

The score was one all by the time Bill made it home to take us to the Honda Center in Anaheim.

The artist, Eric Church, had just won Album of the Year at the CMAs for Chief, which features songs with mysterious, obscure lyrics like "Jack Daniels kicked my ass again last night." I made a mental note to tell the mother of my teenaged violin student, that her daughter's hero is a whiskey-swilling, gun-toting, smoker of herbal...uhm...essences: "You know you're at a great concert," he said, "when you step out on stage to do a solo acoustic set and all you can smell is weed."

The concert was an interesting people-watching exercise but the musicians were phenomenal: the guitarist competently melted faces while striking Iron Maiden-style poses, and the bassist bounced around on Doc Martens looking like a post-punk New Waver. The banjo player stood motionless, playing the crap out of the one instrument that kept the whole concert firmly rooted in good ol' country. Very solid, very good music!

Friday morning we toured the Capital Records building where Bill works. He kindly showered us with gifts of CDs and vinyl, and toured us through the major recording studios. We drooled over the immense sound boards and other high-end recording equipment. While we wandered through the large studio where the likes of Frank Sinatra once recorded with orchestras, staff were setting up for a press conference to announce the release of all 14 digitally remastered Beatles albums. Very exciting, especially for my Beatles aficionado friend.

On leaving, we wandered down Hollywood Boulevard vaguely in the direction of the Chinese Theatre, but our nerdy heads turned like homing devices, when we passed what turned out to be the modern art gallery, LACE. 

We escaped downtown L.A. before rush hour and had time to run through our music once more before heading out for Little Tokyo and the 2nd Street Jazz Club.

Ready to...play music. 

The crowd was really young and each of the three bands ahead of us had their own drum kit to set up and dismantle. Apprehensive, we wandered out for Starbuck's and to psyche ourselves up for our set. We knew we'd be completely different from anything else being played there. All indie rock bands, then us, a mellow acoustic duo of guitar, violin, and soft voices.

After a solid set from Brit-pop trio Far*Out (a tough act to follow!), much of the first crowd turned over to Clem's friends and my family members: Aunt Jean, Jim, and Tina. I was so glad they came - it was like being at home in a strange city for me, having supportive family in the audience!

I plugged into an on-stage amp and was too quiet at first until one of the audience members kindly told me to turn up. Despite a few mistakes that friends swear they didn't notice, we turned in a respectable performance given the few days of practice, and ended with quite a solid rendition of Just Like Heaven by The Cure. Other songs in the set included The Camerawalls originals by Clementine:
 - Bread and Circuses
 - My Life's Arithmetic Means
 - Wake up to the Sight of Love
 - Canto de Maria Clara
We threw in a cover of The Smiths' Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want, the Margo Guryan cover, Someone I Know, and I attempted the folk song, The Water is Wide.

A mandatory post-gig dinner was scavenged from the sushi place next door, fuel for a long Saturday of art-gazing at the Getty.

The Getty

The Getty Gardens

Sculpture of child martyr Saint Cyrucus (1470-1480)
by Francesco Laurana (1420-1502)

15th Century Latin Gradual

Head of a Woman ~1654 by Michael Sweerts, Flemish (1618-1664)

Side Table, Italian, ~1670. Attributed to Johann Paul Schor, Austrian, 1615-1674. 

Exhausted art-lover, early 21st century.

The Getty Museum is one of those amazing places you can spend the whole day at. We were lucky enough to be there the day of one of its concerts: The Rossetti String Quartet performed Haydn (Op. 50 No. 1), Shostakovich (Op. 108), and Beethoven (No. 10 E maj, "The Harp"), the favourite composers of Chicago photographer Ray K. Metzker whose work was on display.

Back at Aunt Jean's, we prepared for Clem's first hiking trip in who knows how long: Joshua Tree National Park, renowned for the strange, twisted trees that caught the imaginations and obsessions of U2 in the time leading up to their famous album of the same name. So excited were we on arriving at our first hike that we forgot water, food, and map, but caught some amazing photos, finishing the day with a glimpse of sunset.

Split Rock

Tulip Rock

Along the main road, Joshua Tree National Park.

Sunset at Keys View Lookout.

Monday, our last day of adventuring, we filled with a variety: Hidden Valley where rustlers hid stolen cattle and - surely - experienced an amazing landscape. We capitulated with a summit of Lost Horse Mountain on a trail that included a stop at an historic gold mine.

Climbing wall in Hidden Valley.

Lost Horse Mine

Local resident: antelope squirrel.

Mojave.

Summit, Lost Horse Mountain

Top of this corner of the world.

Parting ways we set out for separate futures, mine leading to a wonderful dinner with my dad's large and boisterous extended family.

Just as I know I'll see my new-found family again, I will see Clemen and my other far-flung friends. For me, travel is not just to go, buy a t-shirt, take some photos, go home with nice memories and a tan. I travel to accomplish a purpose, to develop and deepen relationships, to influence a life change, be it my own or someone else's.

Now I'm grounded once again...until next time!

Fiddling but not traveling

Just because I don't get vacation yet with my new job, doesn't mean I can't still write about traveling with my fiddle! Actually, I have recently bought a plane ticket to go somewhere that I intend to take my fiddle AND play it with another musician (fingers crossed)! But that won't be until early November. In the meantime, I've still been playing in and around Winnipeg this summer.

Alfie Mella, my band mate and founding member of Half Man Half Elf, the band I currently play with (and the author of the blog elfideas), and I were trying to put together a slide show and performance to share stories of our trip to the Philippines but we found ourselves without any other band members. So I did a few gigs with other musicians and focused on my solo set.

Playing Ukranian folk songs for our respective nieces with my bro-in-law at Riding Mountain after taking part in a family relay team at the Triathlon (Ken swam 1500 m and I ran 10 km)

This summer I my accordion-playing brother-in-law and I shared music at a senior's hospital and Folklorama's Ukranian Kiev pavilion. I also performed at a Dragon Boat Race festival with some fellow Forks Buskers: Nova Scotia's Mike Simon and new Winnipeg bluegrass band members, the Flat City Folk.

Myself with Susan and Mike Simon with fellow busker,
mandolin player Dave Labovich

Donovan Locken from the FCF joined forces with me for one of the Grant and Wilton Coffee House's summer sittings.

More recently, Half Man Half Elf has recovered and managed to get a small set together with some new bandmates to appear at Manitoba's first annual Filipino Street Festival (my camera died as usual so no record of that event!). We have another gig on Sept 22 (a fundraiser for the Red Cross for Philippine flood victims), and I have two more weddings plus a solo gig coming up over the next few weekends.

Then Alfie and I have to get our acts together for a rather prestigious upcoming performance on November 1st for the noon-hour Skywalk concert and lecture series, curated by the Virtuosi Concerts series director, Harry Strub. This time it MUST be acoustic and we MUST be on our best classical behaviour!

So music is really taking charge of life. Even Chester is making requests! Tonight he started to yowl at me and scratched at the underside of my upright piano. He wouldn't stop crying at me until I sat down and practiced Couperin's Les Baricades Misterieuses. Weird for a cat who usually yowls at me to STOP practicing!

Chester insisting I practice the piano.

So I sat still long enough to practice this piece which I love and has special meaning to me: someone once told me it expressed my personality in music - so out of curiosity I had to learn it!

I still haven't learned the whole thing perfectly though...so if this works, this is just the beginning.

Meantime what travel I HAVE done has involved paddling and hiking with NO fiddle. There is no WAY I'm lugging that thing 63 km down the Mantario Trail or into high waves on big, unknown lakes. This past September Long weekend I hiked Mantario for the 9th time in preparation for my 10th time in 10 years anniversary hike coming up in October. I assure you, my fiddle will again stay at home.

Current Musings and Past Reminiscences

The more you travel the more you find similarities among the people and places of this world - further proof that we are all fundamentally the same the world over. We all need to eat, sleep, breathe and love. And all that other stuff that isn't so romantic like fighting, complaining, going to the bathroom, dying... just keeping it real here.

I was recently reminded of our universal commonality when my friend Clementine who blogs at Musings of a Commoner  posted some photos of a traditional Philippine Good Friday procession involving floats covered with lights and doll-like statues covered in fabric clothing, jewels, flowers and other ornaments. The figures reminded me so much of statues I saw while walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostele across northern Spain.

Virgin of the Stars in a museum in Carrion de los Condes, Palencia, Castile-Leon

Though I am no expert on colonialism, it is likely that the Good Friday tradition in the PH has roots in Spanish customs that were brought with the conquistadors. Looking at the level of religious practice in both countries today, it is interesting to see that the number of people still practicing the faith imposed by Spanish rule in the PH is far more than the percentage still attending Mass in Spain. But that's a subject for another day...

Since earliest humans walked the earth, we have been travelling and sharing and intermingling our respective ways of life - not always in a friendly way - again - the colonialism example! Again I look to my experiences walking the Camino de Santiago in 2009 as a learning experience about how small the world really is and how much we all have in common. And how true Ecclesiastes is where it says "there is nothing new under the sun."

Camino: that way.

Here's the basic story of the pilgrimage. The Path of Saint James, or el Camino de Santiago de Compostele is one of several routes that criss-cross Europe to reach the westernmost point of land on the European continent: the village of Finisterre, or Fisterra, which name comes from the Latin: end of the earth. Ancient peoples considered it a holy place because it was where the sun fell off the edge of the earth - back when it was believed to be flat.

When Rome was expanding, her soldiers tromped their way across Spain building arrow-straight roads and "civilizing" (oppressing) the so-called "savages" who were the indigenous Spanish people minding their own business in the north.

Atapuerca, UNESCO World Heritage Site on the Camino, where archeological evidence of the earliest known Hominins of western Europe have been found.

Later, the Vatican issued a codex (ie. its version of history) that stated that St. James the Greater, one of Christ's Apostles, was buried in a field of stars upon which site was built a huge cathedral around which sprung up the Holy City of Santiago de Compostele. St. James had ministered to the people of that region and when he was beheaded in Jerusalem, his followers took his body up there. His remains and those of his disciples Saints Timothy and Athanacious are in an ornate little silver box that pilgrims can visit in a crypt below the Cathedral's altar even to this day.

The Cathedral at Santiago de Compostele.

Since earliest Christian times, ordinary people have walked hundreds of kilometres to visit St. James' final resting place. In recent years the act of walking the pilgrimage has gained popularity among people of all faiths from all over the world. Different routes start in different countries but the main road is known as the Camino Frances, which I did starting in the French village of St. Jean Pied-de-Port and ending in Finisterre. It took 35 days from May 12 to June 17, 2009 and I walked just under 900 km, averaging about 22 km per day.

Even in big cities like Burgos, you can't get lost if you follow the yellow arrows.

Everywhere I saw the struggle between faiths and cultures: if it wasn't the Romans conquering the indigenous Spanish, it was the Spanish fighting the Moors as the muslim invaders were then known. In almost every church on the Camino, there was a statue of St. James as the saviour of Charlemagne's army, turning the tide of battle against the Moors.

Santiago depicted more peacefully here as the pilgrim in the Cathedral at Roncesvalles. I can't find the photo but there's statues of him on a horse trampling an unfortunate Moor.

Fast forward to the 1500s and the Spanish sail across the world ending up in the Sulu Sea, landing on the shores of a lush, green country peopled by a sophisticated society.

Though Spanish is no longer spoken or taught in the Philippines, Spain has left a deep and lasting mark on the people, their traditions and attitudes. Having visited both countries, I have had a glimpse into the fabric of one society that has influenced another so profoundly. It's amazing to see the connections between people who have never set foot in each others' lands and who don't even speak the same language.

I'm not going to write about the wrongs and horrors of colonialism here because I'm no expert - I'm just a traveller writing what I see - and I saw much beauty, love, and humanity in both places.

Balloons, bombers and bonsai: an incredible last day

One hour of sleep is ridiculous. We had no choice, apparently, but to get ourselves to Pet and Omai's mountaineering buddy Reggie's place by 3:30 a.m., the appointed meeting time. By whose appointment I have no idea. I was just along for the ride.

Now, don't think me foolish to go to an unknown place with a bunch of strange men at the wee hours of the morning...okay that sounds really bad. To put it in context: I had a cell phone, money, street map, a rudimentary idea of where I was, and was with people I'd known for at least four weeks who were friends of my Winnipeg band-mate for upwards of 25 years. NOW it sounds boring. I would never go off with someone I'd just met to a completely strange place - but doesn't it sound exciting? The sort of story to give one's mother a worry fit. Hi mom! : )

Arriving at Reggie's I woke up enough to realize we were at the home of an artist or interior designer. Art hung on the walls and the chairs were stark white and 1950s-like. Everything was extremely precise in colour and placement. I sat carefully on a snow-white chair and snoozed delicately for a bit. A girl I was later introduced to as Neeka sat across from me. No one was fully awake yet. Eventually we went out and waited while various cars (Reg has quite a collection) were rearranged and got into one that was the appropriate size for our group of: Reg, Neeka, Eugene, Pet. Omai and me. Omai sat in the trunk - I think it was a jeep - and Pet, Eugene and I sat in the back seat. Heads fell immediately back on headrests and much snoozing ensued.

We arrived as the sun rose to a large field turned into an efficient parking lot marked with banners and string. The annual Winnipeg Folk Festival parking disaster could be much improved if it followed a similar system! Immediately we were accosted by Taho vendors and had breakfast. Yes, I am now a Taho fan, thanks to Alfie.

Omai ready for anything as we arrive at the Balloon Festival.

Master Photographer at work for pleasure.

We arrived just in time to see the festival kick-off. A bunch of sky-divers parachuted to earth most patriotically:

Paraglider with Philippine flag.

Giant Cake balloon!

Cake lift-off!

The Festival was also an opportunity for the Philippine Army to display its equipment, much of which comes from the US Army.

A massive AK Something-or-other, US made.

Recruiting, of course!

A recycled whosiwhatsit.

Oh, THAT's what it is.

We waited in line for a million years to have a chance to sit in various aircraft including this one:

L-R: Reg, Neeka, Reg's friends, Pet, me, Eugene.

Then everyone had a fun poseur moment: I channelled Isadora Duncan...

...or Amelia Earheart.

The day quickly got too hot to stay out much longer so we retreated to a mall in Pampanga for lunch. Turns out it's a mall for which Reggie designed the green space!

The artist explains his work.

Everything had meaning and symbolism. I could never do Reg's explanation justice and will probably get it all wrong but basically, the waves represent the ocean, all the plants are indigenous, and the site is a former rice field so there's a symbolic rice square in the middle of it all.

Ocean waves

Beautiful walk ways with carefully selected plants.

The designer in his space. Behind us is the rice square.

"Whenever you do an activity with Reggie, it usually takes the whole day," Pet remarked - approximately. You can't just do one thing. There's so many things to do when you hang out with Reg. After lunch we went back to his place. Neeka disappeared and we snacked on frozen fruit. He gave us a tour of the house and explained some of his art works. We also got a peek at several prototype cars that he is designing. Very exciting!

He then proposed going to tour the UP (University of the Philippines) campus where he and Pet and Eugene had been members of the Mountaineering Club. It was lush and green, busy with students. As we drove past one group of young men, we observed one standing with his back to the road facing the trees. "Peeing is more fun in the Philippines," Reg quipped dryly.

Next on the tour was a Japanese Bonsai garden that someone had donated to the UP.

UP bonsai garden.

Exotic plants in the bonsai garden: an inspiration for my own yard.

Pet, Reg, Eug et moi.

Sculpture or natural rock?

Moose or Elkhorned tree.

A flower pot to envy!

A Pavlova moment in the garden.

Someone please name this plant!

Greenhouse.

My own personal garden gnome: Omai at his tricks!

Lipstick plant.

Another "name that flower" contest.

Tiny stone monkey.

Finally we returned to Reg's house in Quezon City and retrieved Omai's car. Wending our way back to Ramil's place Omai stopped in several places to deliver or pick up camera parts. We also dropped off Pet's guitar with a repair shop that Aldrin had recommended.

Alfie's entire family was home just finishing dinner so Omai and Pet were able to say goodbye to their childhood friend. For the last time in who knows how long.

Norman, Ruperto, Alfie & Evawwen

We three musketeers also said our farewells.

My new bffs Pet and Omai. The pose is "the grabbing hand" from the Depeche Mode song "Everything Counts." It's an Alfie thing!

What an incredible two days! And I still had to finish packing. It was hard to believe that the next day I'd be getting on a plane and leaving this place that I'd come to think of as home, and that I would not see my new group of friends for who knows how long. I don't think my tired brain was able to process it. I just kept moving, not thinking of finalities at all. I'm still not. I have formed a community of wonderful friends and I am obliged to return.