color and sound part 2

No high school reunion for yours truly, no wine bar and appetizers, none of my slacker friends were there if the photos were any indication. Instead I had dinner with the folks and extended family and went down to the radio station to play two hours of riffage. Usually the audience is too busy toking and/or driving to call in and request anything, but there were a lot of listeners online, including France and Germany, and a few people called in to know what I was playing, which is always kind of gratifying. The following's what I remember, though not in this order.

 

 

 

 Drove out to meet up with some of the garden folk for some unknown factor free show involving a Chi-town metal band with violinists at a social hall in Slavic Village. Walked in to behold a fog machine, sundry flashing colored lights, a rendition of "Raining Blood" performed by two ladies in leather on electric violin playing to a crowd of senior citizens in white plastic lawn chairs clutching glowsticks. I wish I had my camera to document this, but having been on the run all day, that didn't happen.

It might be the only show I've ever been to where the definitive opening riff eliciting little response, and after its conclusion the audience clapped as hard as they did for Vivaldi and a similar rendition of Metallica's "One." It was surreal to say the least, but I found the best acoustics were just outside the door at the fire pit where I ended up chilling with the other band members and a nanny and some other sundry folk.

The next morning, we had a full band and as the sun came through the windows and it felt so good to just play guitar and not have to sing, to noodle around and lock in with a fabulous drummer and one of my favorite bassists, thankful for the artistic freedom in a liturgical setting to send out waves of Gibson SG reverberations through my beloved 1950s tube amp.  The Queen of the Bondo was in the mood for a cemetery jaunt as was I, so we went over there for the afternoon a few hours after Randal as it turns out, though we detoured through East Cleveland past storefronts selling insecticide and hymnals and the abandoned observatory once visited in an earlier dumber time before the blossoming of Reflective Powers. While everything inside was intact upon our clandestine entry a few years back, now the copper's been stripped off the domes and doubtless the green marble and the chandeliers are long gone too...

The cemetery's lovely pretty much all the time, the colors came damn close to stealing the show from the gorgeous monuments and angels. When the sun broke through the clouds, it was dazzling, all the orange and yellow, multiple colors on each leaf. We parked by the chapel and wandered up to the Garfield monument, up and down the hills out to where the more recent mausoleums for former sports team owners were that she referred to as the "exurbs of the dead," with their water sprinklers and long paths and bland richness. Still, one couldn't ask for a more perfect day to get the inner goth kid on. 

 

eremita

It's been a hermiting weekend, with a quick interlude of funeral procedures assuaged by hiking among the ledges with a fellow traveler when the weather was beautiful. Something so peaceful about being immersed in a landscape of epically giant sandstone rocks pockmarked and cavitied, with undulating greens and reds, hosting ferns.

No texting, the minimal of phone conversations, no epic plans, even church was just the most minimal of social interaction, I had nothing to say, really and a chance to retreat was beautiful, good, and needed to step back and examine.  I have a whole day tomorrow that's a blank slate and that's wonderful. My sleep has been like the dead. We don't have to talk about politics for a few days, these social obligations can be deferred, it feels good to be alone and untethered, but knowing there's a loving encircling should I need to reach out. A CD player full of autumnal tunes. I don't need much these days.