TTTaiko

Ok.  It’s not as exciting as saving the whales or the pandas, but at least this campaign will have direct measurable results.

What I am trying to do is get 30 friends to pitch in $50 to my “Save the Molar” campaign.

Why?  I need a root canal.  I had a tooth that was bothering me and went to the dentist and dropped $1600 for a visit, some x-rays, a crown and an evaluation by an endodontist, and there was a very good chance that all I was going to need was the crown, but in the end I am going to need a root canal to stop my head from feeling like I have an ice pick being jammed up into my eyeball.
So far I have 2 pledges from 2 friends.

What do you have to lose?  Well.  ok.  $50.  It’s a very good cause, though.  At least I think it’s a very good cause, but I understand I have a very biased opinion in this regard.

You won’t get any fancy return address labels, free magazine subscriptions, a juicer, a toaster, or a free set of steak knives.  You will definitely get a smile or few and my eternal thanks.

If you are ready, willing, and able please do drop me a line if you don’t already have my contact info…

oh…and a Happy Inauguration Day to everyone!

shinnen akemashite omedetou gozaimasu

I know.  I’m a bit late, but it’s been a busy year so far.

January 1 found me at PDX booked on a cancelled flight.  Since I was going to miss my connection home and then probably miss my flight the next day, I managed to rebook everything so I could fly to Vancouver directly from Portland.

Then I realized my passport was in Sacramento.

My mom was kind enough to go to my house, pick up my passport and air freight it to me at 5:00 in the morning on the day of my flight.  She called me from the air cargo office in Sacramento to give me the waybill number and I fumbled in the darkness as I was writing it down.

I went to the PDX Alaska Air Cargo office the following morning.  There was one person ahead of me so I was hopeful that it wouldn’t take too long.  I gave the woman at the counter my name and told her that if my package wasn’t under my name that it would be under “Sacramento Taiko Dan” because that’s my known shipper account name.

This cranky woman then tells me that there is no package there consigned to me and that there were no packages even on the first flight from Sacramento to Portland.  I give her the waybill number that I wrote down and she tells me it’s useless.

I leave the office, dumbfounded, but I also grab a brochure and call corporate.  The person on the other end of the line tells me that a passport was sent on the first flight, that it had arrived and been consigned to a Horizon Air Employee and should just be sitting in the office, and that I had missed one number for the waybill and had a zero where there should have been a 6 on one of the digits.  Passports are shipped with special designation and are somewhat easier to track and so the receiving office should have no problem finding the package.

Heh.
I go back into the office.  The woman who had “un-helped” me initially was no longer at the counter and another guy eventually comes up and offers to help the lone kid working the counter at this point.  First thing the new guys says to me is, “Oh yeah.  We got a passport in this morning.”

He pulls the files up, prints out the stuff I need and we go through the door and there is a big box waiting just for me.

Why the first woman was so very unhelpful is beyond me.  I am still pretty well gobsmacked about it.

Anyway.  I did manage to catch my flight after all that (it was a bit of a close call, but it all worked out ok).  Then I got to experience the continuing saga of the Vancouver Snowpocalypse.  Predicted light flurries and rain turned out to be 6cm of steady snowfall.  It was beautiful, but crazy.  The main roads had been cleared, for the most part, but a lot of transit was out of commission, even by the time I got there.

Thankfully I still got some time to practice with Eileen and Leslie and also to see a few friends before heading over to Victoria.  Thanks to Leslie and her amazing 4×4 subaru, I made it to Tsawwassen for the 11:00 sailing of the Spirit of British Columbia and had a beautiful, smooth ride over to Victoria for my workshop with Uminari Taiko.
There was a quick lunch at The Roost (theroostfarmbakery.ca/about_us.htm).

Gayle Nye, whose son happens to work in the kitchen there, recommended  the meatloaf sandwich, so I had that and some tomato basil soup.  All very fresh and tasty.

The workshop went well, although 4 hours simply was not enough time (!), and then we all went to Futaba for dinner.

This restaurant is one of the few Japanese restaurants around that offers genmai as an alterntive to white rice with dinner, and they had a number of vegetarian options.  I got the beef sukiyaki, though.  It was cold and rainy and perfect weather for it.  I regret that I didn’t have a chance to get to Posh this time around, but maybe in February.

If everything works out, Joadiako will be in the Cultural Olympiad concert at the QET on February 12.  That should be a bit of fun.

Meanwhile I am home and getting ready to head to Moab.  There will be Crestone folks attending this year, and I’m not sure who else.  This should be a bit of fun, too.

The sun is shining here in Sacramento.  It’s a beautiful day and I am happy to be home.

I’m leaving out who because if you’re here you know who I am.

What I’ve been doing a lot of lately is spending time with my grandmother.  She’s been going through a lot of radical changes in her life, losing her son (my father) and her husband last year, moving out of her home and into an apartment, facing the prospect of perhaps not being able to drive (in a hometown that has fairly well been planned out around automobile transportation since the mid-60′s)…and just being older and not quite as adaptable to radical change as she used to be.

She has lived through and done so much in her lifetime.  She has survived two husbands and most of her closest friends.  She helped to raise me and has supported me in so many ways my whole life.

Most of my focus has been on trying to be a good granddaughter to her now, especially now that my father is gone.

Mostly I figure I am not doing enough, that I could be doing more for this woman who has done so much for me…who has loved me so well her whole life.

I’ve been working, too, by and by.  I’ve done some good workshops and a few good performances…but there’s always more to do than I have time to do, and I’m still not entirely altogether together.

One fun thing was a little Hallowe’en-inspired skit where I was a drummer who couldn’t stop drumming in for a doctor’s visit that so annoyed the doc she killed me but even death couldn’t stop me and I came back as a re-animated skeleton that eventually managed to both kill and re-animate the doc who was turned to the “dark side” and also started drumming.

It was all tremendously great, except the part where we were blocking out and running through the part where I died and did a prat-fall off the table we were using as prop exam table directly on top of a BOLT shime.

yes.  ow.

I’ve also done a little bit of work for my cousin that should prove to be very interesting and I am indebted to Anchan and Elaine for their help in pulling everything together for my end of the project.
I got some incredibly great deep tissue massage/bodywork done by Delia Enevoldson while I was in Vancouver (good luck trying to book an appointment, she’s usually so swamped), and Millie Bun put me back together when I got home.
Hopefully that sort of covers when and why, too.

I was on a flight home from Vancouver when the pilot, or maybe it was the first officer, announced that we had a new President-elect and it was Barack Obama.

Many of us cheered.  Some did not.

I had recently been in an airport flight lounge and had been temporarily shocked to see cable news reporting McCain ahead with 56% of the vote, until I realized it was results by state and they were focusing on Georgia.

Now here’s the part about the food.

I’ve been eating at the Posh all-you-can-eat-sukiyaki restaurants in Vancouver (and Burnaby) and I love them and think they are a great deal.  I wish there was a shabu-shabu option, but the sukiyaki is great.  The meat is sliced very thin, the rest of the ingredients are very fresh, and the tare is is not too sweet and not too salty.

I also had an incredible roast beast dinner with friends and it was so tasty I could weep for joy just thinking about it now.

Another friend made bread pudding for me and if I close my eyes I can almost still taste its custard-y goodness.

I’ve been making a lot of calabrese salads (fresh tomato, mozzarella, salt, olive oil,  balsamic vinegar, and basil) and winning over the hearts and tongues of friends with them.

I had some very tasty French Toast at the Tower International Cafe when I got home to Sacramento that almsot matched the goodness of the bread pudding.

I also bought some Luxardo (marasca) Marasche cherries.  Real maraschino cherries.

I thought, you know, that it would be a good thing to experience.  They are tasty, deep dark red and packed in their own syrup.  The freaky bright red ones chock-full of FD&C #5 are not too far off in the overall taste, but I have the distinct impression of the real thing being more intense and wholesome and sublimely flavorful.  They are also interestingly textured.

I want more of my friends to try them, so please do come visit if you get a chance and ask for one to try, as they are still kind of a rare thing in the world.  I also couldn’t possibly eat the whole jar so someone has to come help before they go bad.
I picked up a garnacha varietal by Monte Oton Vineyards from Corti Brothers, and it’s a steal at about $8 a bottle.

I’ve been told that this is a good year to buy reasonably priced good wines, and I’ve had more expensive ones that weren’t near as good.

Meanwhile we’re still gearing up for SFTD’s 40th Anniversary,  our own Spring concert and 20th Anniversary concert next year, and Asano Taiko’s 400th Anniversary.

Then, too, there is the Shidara residency in April.

Lots of stuff happening in the next little while.

Lastly I want to add that my life is filled with incredible, passionate, brilliant, dedicated, warmhearted, good, and loving people.  I feel blessed by the amount of love and support I have.  I feel blessed for the time I have with my grandmother.  I feel blessed to have a loving family and extended family.

I’m happy to be alive.

Really.

Kuri and I started out by driving equipment out to Kansas City. MO.  The first hint of trouble was heading up the hill (I-80) towards Reno.  We overheated somewhat abruptly.  I had been sleeping, and made the quick assumption we’d overheated because were were on an incline and the AC was running.  We killed the AC, limped in to the next closest service station.  We got some coolant, a few road flares, and the most expensive bottle of water I’d ever bought in my life ($11.00 for a gallon of Crystal Geyser).  Really.  I was aghast.  I understand that the logistics of getting things to to this particular service station might be a bit difficult, but still !?!

On the other hand, all I could think of was Hop explaining to me the many ways people die in the desert, and how we were about to drive through lots of desert, and the fact that one gallon was probably not even enough but better than nothing.

I opted not to complain nor ask for a refund, despite the exorbitance of the price, seeing as we also had no large container for potable water with us.

Once we got coolant back into the system, the van did fairly well the rest of the way (although we drove mostly at night and kept the heat running).

To be honest, I slept most of the way there.  Kuri was a driving fiend.  20 hours more or less straight through.

Oh to be young again.
We arrived in KC two days ahead of schedule and largely under budget owing to Kuri’s tenacity and triumphantly frugal ways.
Thanks to Angie Ahlgren, we managed to find and grab some tasty BBQ at Gates’ on Main Street, before watching a lot of Law and Order (and related shows) on cable before Kuri had to head out for a Taikoza gig in Davenport.

This left me on my own for the most part for a couple of days.  I explored very minimally before Shidara got there, mostly trying to hook up with friends of friends and researching a bit via the net and available brochures.  Megan had to run take care of some family stuff in the midst of everything, so I had the job of trying to find edifying things to explore.  Sadly, most of the places I was referred to were actually malls.  They had a decent time shopping, but I hadn’t done enough homeworkto give them much of a true taste of the richness of KC.

My bad.

At least they had some BBQ.

Shidara’s showcases were da bomb and they managed to pick up some solid bookings.

Two days later they were gone and Kuri and I stopped to get the oil changed before heading to Denver.  There wasn’t anyone waiting in line and they got us through fairly quickly, but then, just as they were finishing up, the dang van wouldn’t start.

They fiddled with it for a while and managed to get it going again, and said it might be the starter, but it hadn’t made a funny cranking sound and it was also possible it might have been a low charge on the battery, so we left it at that and then we didn’t seem to have a problem as we made our way to Denver, so I thought maybe it’d all be fine.
Famous last thoughts.

I had pulled over on my way down to NM, where I intended to stay with friends while waiting to drive out to the “Taiko Awakening the Spirit Retreat” in Crestone, CO.

There I was on the side of I-25 just north of the border, and the van wouldn’t start.

Turned the key in the ignition….click.  nothing.  Battery read as charged.  Just…click.  No starting.

Thankfully I had a few bars on my phone and managed to get AAA.

BUT (and this is the second time this has happened to me), first of all the 800-number on the card doesn’t connect you with anyone who can initially actually help you (as they are in another state and must refer you to a local dispatcher) and then, based on the limited information I had regarding my own whereabouts, the dispatcher had no idea where I was and couldn’t figure it out.  I ended up calling friends handy with google to ease my nerves and try to triangulate my position so that I could call AAA back and tell them where I was.  I was in front of a building, but the building had no street address on it, and there was even a phone number for the business in question on a sign in front of the building, but the number was actually was linked to another address somewhere else.
Things got a little better when I was finally hooked up to the local towing service, who had a much better idea of where I might be.
3 Different people stopped to offer help, and none of them knew the name of the road I was on (being an unnamed  frontage road off the interstate), and while I totally get that people in rural areas are generally very helpful because they know that idiots like me die this way all the time, one of the tv episodes I had most recently seen included a kid with a flat tire getting picked up and then buried alive.  In light of that, all the offers of help were not actually helping me to feel any better about my situation.

Sad, now that I think of it, to be so paranoid, I mean.

Anyway, the only way to maybe possibly figure out which exit I had taken would have been to walk down the freeway until I could find a freeway sign.

The AAA driver finally found me, and to make a long story shorter, he gave the starter a few whacks with a hammer and I was on my way (Yes. I could have done it on my own if I had known the whereabouts of the starter, which incidentally is underneath the vehicle toward the passenger side).

The next few days I spent a bit of time trying to find an available mechanic and the right part, but more time just decompressing from my journey up to that point.  Good friends out on Rowe Mesa, NM provided a pleasant and restful haven.

Then I was off again and on my way to Crestone!

The flywheel on the starter held up until I got there, but I ended up in a great little lube shop in Alamosa that could get the part and fix me up for a decent price.

I made it in time for the rehearsal and performance at the college there and then happily went back up into Crestone where I visited with friends who had driven up to see the concert, and their friends at the Sri Aurobindo Learning Center.
Then it was a full weekend teaching at the Shumei International Institute which was beautiful and fabulous and amazing.  The air was crisp and clean, the view was astounding, and the folks there were absolutely great.  The buildings though, are mostly fairly Japanese (architectural style, building materials and even things like the phones…albeit sans the toto washlets), and the staff was mostly Japanese, so in many respects it was just like being in Japan and that was oddly cool but disconcerting.
The workshops went well.  I had fun catching up with Papa Duck (Maruko!) and then voom…I was heading back home to Moab with the folks from the group there who had driven out for the conference.  (Steph, you were, are and remain a life saver!)

Another brief respite in Moab and then I take off to start making my way home and

kerblooey!

Somewhere not far past Green River after the first serious set of inclines and a 4k rise in elevation, the radiator (mostly hose and clamp, from what I understand) blows.

Once again I am on the side of the road in the desert in something very similar to the middle of nowhere, and now I don’t even have cel signal.

I spent a good hour or so trying to force the hose back onto the radiator, but without the tools (read as any helpful tools, as I had a monkey wrench and a couple of rockpicks), what I mostly managed to do was get a blister on my finger, gaffle my thumb on my right hand, and end up with an odd bruise on the opposite forearm.

Oddly, very oddly, I discovered I had the tiniest signal sitting inside the van.  I had to be touching the body of the van and I had to be leaning slightly off to the right toward the passenger seat, but I did finally manage to get someone at AAA (who still struggled with my location, even though I was more able to tell them where I was, but then did better than anyone else from AAA who’d ever handled an emergency road service call from me).

Close to 2 hours later (seeing as the driver had driven out all the way from Richfield) I was sitting in the cab of a MAC Towing towtruck with one Mr. Sean McKinley.  We talked a little bit about Taiko, but also his mixed Scottish and Ute heritage and the fact that he was staying connected to his own roots by building bows and napping flint for his own arrows, which he had used to take down a few deer (and not because he was a good hunter but because he’d managed to do things the right way)
We talked about spirit and magic and power and how people are with it and wield it in the world, and about how many old traditions are dying out.

He talked about his wife’s family and an amazing tale of his mother-in-law and how she had worked so hard on behalf of her children, and how sometimes when they are driving down the freeway he has to to stop the car for his wife’s grandmother so she can gather things she needs from the desert (and how she was the type of person who didn’t often accept rides and used to walk 35 miles to go trade for things, and then home again), and and about the very sad truth that a lot of knowledge and skills will pass with her when she goes.
It was a great ride back into Richfield, and the one time I’ve totally gotten my money’s worth for having AAA+(plus) road service.  It covers 100 miles of towing, and it had been exactly 100 miles from where I’d broken down near MM134 to the shop.
Sean took me to the Travelodge closest to the shop he drives for, Mike’s Auto Clinic (Yay, Mike!), and we went our separate ways.

Then I had a reasonably tasty steak dinner at Steve’s Steakhouse right there at the hotel.  That was nice.
I’d been wanting a steak dinner for a few days, so there was a bit of serendipity in all of that.

Generously portioned, reasonably priced, cooked perfectly to order somewhere between medium rare and medium, and with a side of freshly steamed not overdone broccoli, I’d have to say it’s one of the better steak dinners I’ve had on the road in a good long while.
One reasonably quick repair the following morning and  I was off again down the interstate…and then I did something kind of crazy, all things considered.  I decided to take HWY 50 instead of cutting up I-15 to SLC and I-80 home.

It was great!!!

Seeing as there was no way I could have made it back in time for the gigs I was supposed to be home for, I took Sean’s advice and stopped at the Fremont Indian museum and hiked a bit there and saw a lot of the amazing petroglyphs, there and it made me kind of happy to be out hiking a little and learning about the former inhabitants of that place.
I drove across the Great Basin and reminisced about driving through with my parents in 1972.  I could take my time on the inclines (often dropping down to 35mph, because really the van was more than fully loaded), and I picked up radio AM660 along the way and got to listen to a bunch of stuff in Dine’ I couldn’t understand, and a mix of country music and some more traditional songs that made the drive that much more perfect…mostly because I could think about this part of the planet being successfully inhabited by people on and of for about 13,000 years, which is all on top of knowing it was one a vast inland sea millions of years before, and there I was driving across the bottom of it.

Trippy.
I made it into Ely in time to have a decent dinner and decided to stop at La Fiesta.  The parking lot was full and the restaurant was packed, which I took to be a good sign.  The service was reasonably fast, given the number of customers, and there were chips and salsa to munch on after i placed my order.  They also served some sort of pickled cabbage with onions appetizer thing that I’ve never seen before.
I had the #3 combo and the flavor of the shredded chicken was awesome.  The taco shell was crisp and paper-thin, the enchilada was also very tasty, and the sauce was savory and flavorful without being overpowering. The only disappointment was the tamale, but after having delectable tamales in Tuscon, it’s been hard to find good tamales elswhere.

The other downside was I’d wanted the 3 tacos but couldn’t get three different meats (so as to try the ground beef, shredded beef and shredded chicken).

After dinner I went as far as Austin and took a small break, at which point I decided to push on to Fallon (seeing as there really didn’t seem to be any place to stay in Austin).

Being pretty exhausted by the time I got to Fallon (after having made use of a rumble strip or two), I pulled over and slept on the side of the highway for a while, then later moved slightly down the road so I was parked just off the highway on a side road.

There were a billion stars and it was just warm enough to not need a blanket. All in all like camping, sort of, and not one car passed the entire time I was there…and then I was off again after getting some much appreciated reasonably inexpensive gas.

I was doing great until just past Reno and then was starting to nod off again, so I pulled over and parked and slept.  I woke up and felt reasonably ok, but within a few minutes was nodding off again, so pulled over again and slept some more, and the next little while was spent doing that until I got to Auburn and turned up the radio to sing along, which still wasn’t quite enough, so I started calling folks and that saw me back home (through traffic, no less…and 80 at 7AM!?  yeesh.  bad news).

I know there is a huge gap of things I actually meant to blog about between that last post and this one, and at this point I think it’s pretty unlikely that I will manage to get any of it up, seeing as life is still whizzing by and there’s so much going on.

We’ll see.  At the very least I should try to get to the review of the all-you-can-eat Sukiyaki restaurant in Vancouver…meanwhile, check out Kristy’s stuff.  She  has been to most places I have been and even to some places I haven’t been, and has supplemental videos and at least as many if not more food reviews (especially the tasty breakfast places we went to in Denver with Sara and her boyfriend).
zzzzzz

I’m sitting at the port in Juneau waiting to get on the ferry. It’s about a 2-day trip from here to YPR (Prince Rupert, BC).

Let’s see. Where did the adventure start?

I had a flight all the way in to Canyonlands Field in Moab, where I was going to be hooking up Shidara. When I got to Denver I was informed that my flight into Moab had been canceled due to excessive winds and they airline was offering a flight into GJT (Grand Junction) or I could take the morning flight directly to Moab (although there was a high wind advisory for the following day as well and they couldn’t promise me that flight would actually depart as scheduled).

‘course I was supposed to be performing that night, but I called ahead to say I would probably only just barely make it there on time.
The flight into Junction also ended up being delayed over an hour. I called again to say it wasn’t likely I’d be there in time at all.

Evidently it was a harrowing flight with a lot of turbulence, only I missed all of that because I was sound asleep. The only reason I know it was such a bumpy ride was because when we got to Junction and I got over to the rental car place, there was another fella who was also on his way to Moab and he was kind enough to give me a lift.

It was a great ride in, actually. I completely missed the whole concert by the time we got into Moab and ended up at Hop’s house catching up with Yoda, Zen and Tao because all the humans were out and about doing concert stuff.

There was much rejoicing when everyone got home. Hop and Megan were up into the wee hours baking cookies for everyone and laughing riotously. There was more crazed baking of scones in the morning and we loaded the bus and took off for Idaho.

We stopped in Salt Lake City and took a very brief tour of Temple Square and (more pertinently) the Tabernacle AND I managed to hook up with friends from the ARES PA on the SWG Scylla server…for about 17 minutes…and then we were off again to Rexburg & BYUI.

There was a performance there and it was fun seeing so many of the students come up on stage at the end of Hanamatsuri. Wild and crazy bunch o’ kids. If you want more specific details about the venue or other parts of the tour, you’ll have to check out Shidara’s daily blog (if you can read Japanese).

From Rexburg we headed to Boise and from Boise we flew into Fairbanks. Flying in was incredible. Seeing all of the glaciers and the overall majestic splendour of the terrain. I mean. Wow. It was striking.
The concert there went well and one of the highlights of that stop was going to Chena Hot Springs, although some might say it was seeing moose on the way home (we also went to the Ice Hotel museum and shared an appletini in a glass made of ice, and that was…cool).

From Fairbanks it was off to Anchorage and we had some free time there, so we ended up going on a whale watch jaunt on a boat with a skipper with no arms. When I inquired about the back story he said he had his book, “Alone & Unarmed,” in the wheelhouse. I thought it was a joke, but in fact there was a two inch binder that held a number of documents and articles about him. I’ll try to fill in the details later.

We saw Orca, a Bald Eagle, some puffins, some sea lions and seals, a couple of very cute otters, a whack of gulls, some interesting rock formations and a glacier…but no whales. At one point out on the open ocean many of the members of Shidara were screaming and laughing as the boat rolled on the swells. It was a fun time for everyone but Yoshi who was somewhere in the back losing his breakfast.

The shows went well. The school shows went well and we had a bit of fun kicking around town. At some point I will try to get the food reviews up. I am running out of time on this pre-paid card at this particular internet kiosk.

The highlights for me included:

Pasta from ORSO

Crab and macadamia stuffed fresh halibut at Simon and Seafort’s

A perfectly tender rib-eye at Turnagain Point in the joyful company of Lauren & Susan

Lunch at the F-Stop

& some crab specials at Phyllis’…which were not stellar but at least reasonably priced.

I also got to go out for Chinese with friends Roni & Rajih, so all in all it was a fantastic time there in Anchorage

Some of the crew got to see Margaret Cho in concert, and that was a lot of fun. It was the first time I’ve ever actually loaded out of the same theatre on the same day she was appearing on the same stage. Usually I seem to miss her shows by anywhere from a day to a week. It’s the same thing with Kenny Endo. Every time I go to Japan he’s either just leaving or performing right after I leave. I was happy to get to see the show. Some funny stuff and a great opening act to boot.

I am excited bout the trip through the inside passage. Very glad the sun shines longer and later here because we don’t leave until 7:30pm and i don’t want my trip through the inside passage to be like my tour of Hokkaido (in the theatre all day and driving all night on pitch black roads).
I am offline for the next 2 days or so (I get into YVR on Sunday night). The only phone access on the ferry is via satellite and pricey so…likely I won’t be calling anyone.

I have some compositions kicking around in my head. This was a good tour. It’s hard to not be inspired by Alaska and the people who live here.

Or not.

I have been trying to pull things together for 2008, if no where else at least in my head.

We’ve started, albeit a little late, pre-production stuff for Sacramento Taiko Dan’s Spring concert at the SCNA 24th Street Theatre. We are also working on publicity and stuff for Shidara’s Tour and, especially, for their performance in Sacramento on March 31.

I’m joining the tour for the Alaska portion, which should be a bit of fun, and I am thinking to take the long way home and travel by ferry from Whittier to Prince Rupert and then from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy and then on down to Victoria and over to Vancouver and then home. I want to live a little, and that’s one way to do it.

I realize that I am so far behind on so many things a lot of stuff is still falling by the wayside. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of other things keep piling up. Mostly right now i am trying to deal with things related to my father’s estate and the foreclosure on his house, which is a bit of a headache, but nothing too hard. The harder thing was the subsequent death of my grandfather and the changes it’s brought to my grandmother’s life, and the fact that I am the closest one to her (geographically speaking) meaning I am the first one she calls when something goes awry or when she’s feeling a bit lonely, which is often.

Meanwhile I am keeping my eye on the moochers in my back yard. The colony seems to have stabilized at 11 feral cats, two of whom I still need to trap and spay/neuter. I am torn and ambivalent about assuming responsibility for them, but I know if I keep them fed at least they won’t go after as many birds…and it’s the right thing to do…or at least I think it’s the right thing to do. It’s not like I have an abundance of resources to expend, but since the two neighbors who have been feeding these cats are now gone, I guess it’s my turn to become the crazy cat lady next door.

Donations to the cat food fund are gratefully appreciated.

I am itching to compose of late and have started quite a few pieces but really haven’t been able to settle on anything or finish anything. Nothing has felt quite right. I am looking to the world around me for inspiration. It’s a slow process.

My cat is settled in to the covers beside me. I love my cat.

Lots to think about and lots more to do. The thing I am feeling a need to say is that I am not always the best about sending thank you cards and acknowledgements. I just want everyone to know how grateful I am for each and every thing done on my behalf. Great or small.

Please understand I have boxes and boxes filled with mementos and cards and all sorts of things from different people or things that remind me of what people have done on my behalf. I even buy cards and such to send out, and those eventually end up in the boxes, too. I am so terrible in that way. It’s not that I don’t think about it, though, and it’s not that I don’t remember or consider the impact of these acts of kindness or benevolence, hospitality or graciousness. My life is filled with reminders of them and gratitude in my heart. I am so very lucky to have been helped along the way by so many people. I am so very grateful to have the love and support of so many people. It makes it possible for me to do the work that I do. I think I am still doing good work and I hope that it’s some small recompense for what I have received, though in my reckoning I feel like it’s not enough.

In lighter news I was watching the Disney movie “Ratatouille” the other day and saw both Krissy Cababa & Ken Hinoki pop up in the credits (yes, I always watch the credits when I see a movie), and it was a pleasant surprise to see Taiko folks’ names suddenly pop up where I least expect them.

Unfortunately it means I have no idea what’s going on in the lives of many of the people I know and love.

Have I meandered far enough to think I should maybe get back to sorting boxes….?

Yep.  Ok.  I need to add I am not kidding about the boxes.
Oh. keep an eye out for Shidara. They’re coming to a town near you in very short order. Megan (www.taikofury.com) has been working her posterior off pulling this tour together. You don’t want to miss it. I swear. This group has heart and passion and musicality and precision and…Megan performing aside from tour producing.

Oh, and if you’re gonna be in Japan in June-ish, Art Lee is celebrating his 15th Anniversary.

Off to pet my cat.

Tucson International Airport has free wireless – FTW-!

I am sitting an eating a tossed green salad and thin crust margarita (sic) pizza with a Hank’s gourmet philadelphia recipe root beer.

Not a bad way to wait for a plane.

I should add that this airport is very well-appointed. There are a lot of gallery installations, decent restaurants reasonably priced an even sections with cushy chairs in and amongst the regular banked airport chairs.

I hung out with a group of *Bad Girls* today (in short, vivacious, talented creative artists), and that was a great blessing. I’ve also been shopping around for good deals on hanten for a friend and am debating whether or not I should buy this:

http://www.shop-japan.co.jp/english-boku/image-e/s07-9702.jpg

for m’self. It’s not perfectly ideal, but I like it well enough to consider it.

Still getting good feedback on the solo…that it was atypical but varied, textured, musical, and moving.

I dunno. Ultimately, I am happy the audience enjoyed it, and it’s all over and done. There will be another and another and another. Many more opportunities. Hrmm. But I will say was the big problem was I was kangae-sugi….thinking too much….trying too hard.

The Southern Arizona Taiko Showcase was a blast, all in all, and the weather has been almost warm, though very wet. We had carnitas at Juanito’s and some fun times at Buddy’s Grill.

I also had some good body work done and a sublime organic miso shiru, umeboshi & organic kim chee. This trip I am leaving with the sense of having gotten much more back than I put into it, and so I am leaving refreshed and invigorated.

I am looking forward to being home. I need to take care of a lot of stuff with regard to my dad’s estate and pending home foreclosure, and a few other things, and I need to spend some time working on the wilderness outside my back door and get back to trying to trap the last 2 feral cats so that I can spay/neuter them.

I’m sad I’m missing my group’s xmas party. Bah Humbug! Ahh well. As long as everyone’s having fu, it’s all good.

Plane’s boarding soon, so I’m gonna log.

I am in Tucson for Odaiko Sonora’s Taiko showcase, in which I performed an Odaiko solo that (internally, at least) felt like crap. Of course the solos I did in rehearsal went perfectly well. It’s hard because it’s like reaching for something that’s always there only to find it isn’t there.
To be more specific, I kept reaching for a groove that I couldn’t quite settle into, no matter which angle I tried. The rhythms were disjointed — to me. Nothing flowed. Nothing ever felt right.

Which doesn’t mean it didn’t have its moments.

I’ve been told by a few different artists in Japan that their estimation is that people play Taiko reasonably well 60% of the time, poorly 15%, very well 15%, incredibly well 5% 0f the time and are completely in the zone about 2% of the time and completely lost about 2% of the time and that final one percent is a mix of transcendent moments and utter failures.

It wasn’t an utter failure, and I wasn’t completely lost, but for me the solo tonight falls somewhere in the “poorly 15%” category. To be a pro drummer in Japan you have to fairly well guarantee you’re going to be in the upper 15% category 100% of the time.

Tonight I didn’t make the cut.

To be fair, I got a lot of good feedback. Positive feedback, actually.

Internally, though, it was excruciating and it felt undisciplined and unprofessional. More specifically it felt fractured and chaotic.

To be honest, though, it is probably an authentic representation of my own internal landscape. That is who I am right now, or how I am right now. Fractured and chaotic.
Since I am relying on improvisational skills that draw as much upon who and what I am in the moment as straightforward technical skill, I have to consider that it just may be that I looked inside and didn’t like what I found there.

Then I have to consider my artistry and what I believe my obligations are as a professional Taiko drummer.

It wasn’t a good, uplifting classically themed and implemented solo, and a part of me feels bad because that’s been held out as an ideal to always strive for, and as a professional I am supposed to be able, at some level, to leave my own personal stuff behind so that the audience experiences something bigger than me and my ego.
It was raw. It was harsh. It was disjointed. It was…desperate. It felt like one of the worst solos I have ever played.
It could be I just choked. What I fear, however, is that it’s me finally starting to feel the grief and the loss of losing my father in July and then my grandfather just a couple of weeks ago.

My life is fractured so the part of the solo that represents my individual spark of experience came out fractured, too.

Or am I just making excuses?

What’s harder is that so many people proffered the feedback that it was intense and profound and moving and varied and textured and …all these wonderful things.

So maybe I am being overly critical and it wasn’t so bad?

But it was only practical experience and learned skills that pulled me out of the depths of it, and it wasn’t satisfying to me. I’m fairly well angst-y about the whole thing.

It could also be that the internal state is driving the crisis of self-doubt I’m going through right now.

Ok. Here’s the deal. I am not posting this for sympathy. I want those of you that study with me to understand that I also have bad days and doubts and misgivings. I want you to see me going through the process of analyzing aspects of my own performance and what sort of lessons I get to take away from the experiences.  One example being one can’t necessarily be totally objective about one’s own performances, and that sometimes an audience has an entirely different litmus when determining if a thing is good or bad.

It was authentic.  It was well-intentioned.  It just wasn’t technically good to my own standards of what I  find aesthetically pleasing in an odaiko solo.

I do totally get that my own aesthetics and intentions aren’t the only things that matter, but I am struggling with this one.  How can so many people be so moved by something that felt so wrong to me?  Unless the practiced skill came through on some level despite my getting in my own way on other, presumably more superficial levels?
I will grant that what came out was intense.  Maybe the key issue is that it wasn’t where I wanted to go with it.  Maybe the art part happened of its own accord.

I just don’t know.

Visiting Tamiya-sensei at his family temple, Kogenji.  In Tokyo tomorrow and heading home the day after.  I finally got a flight thanks to Grace Miyamoto at Miyamoto Travel.

She is a godsend.  Truly.

Said good-bye to Eileen who came in for the Hono Daiko concert on Sunday and into the jimusho today.  It was a very good day, all things considered.

Big news is that there’s a workshop series and concert in the works for Asano Taiko’s 400th Anniversay, first part of June 2009.

More detailsto follow as they come down the pipeline.

Time to go talk story!

 

Gotta post this…

Asano Taiko has built a new Taiko studio in Aoyama.  It’s available for rental and you can also take workshops.

http://www.asano.jp/kyouwakan/index.html