Snowed in; Cornell; bluegrass festival
Feb. 17th, 2003 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guslMy departure from Boston is postponed for the 4th time. Maybe it's a sign... if only I believed in such things.
The first two times were due to my poor timing of the trip. The second time was because I wanted to visit Cornell. The third was out of desperation for trying to sell my crashed car.
I hate the fact that the CUSTOMER has to call the airline for confirmation, and not the other way. What's worse, I *did* call both the airline and the airport, but nobody would answer.
So now I have no excuse to not catch up with my posts.
-----
Last Tuesday, I wanted to hurry up my packing, so I took a caffeine pill at about 3pm. Bad idea.
After about half an hour, I became all jittery and impatient. My body wasn't jittery, but my mind was. Not only that, but I also got very hungry afterwards. I had to eat a double-size dinner just to satisfy my hunger. But there's more: for hours afterwards, I felt a shortness of breath and unusually tired. When I took a pill at 11pm just before driving to Cornell, the effects were pretty much positive. So I suppose the effect of caffeine is very time-dependent.
The magic spark of bluegrass just wasn't happening at the Cantab, so I followed Jennine to Hanneke's Irish gig at McGann's downtown. Her fiddling is impressive, and she is very enthusiastic, but the acoustics kinda sucked. I say they have the wrong kind of speakers.
-----
Friday night I hung out with Mary, and basically got to know her better. We ordered sandwiches and watched "Y Tu Mama Tambien", and she let me crash at her place. She also gave me a copy of her CD.
-----
Saturday, I took the train to Framingham for the Joe Val Festival. On the train, I met a girl who lived in Angola at the same time I did (but much longer), but she was 6 when I was 12. She even knew Sonnenberg. She came to America just to study and I assume she plans to go back to live in Angola. We started speaking Portuguese, and I tried to maintain a conversation because I liked her accent, but it wasn't going anywhere, so we stopped.
Arriving in Framingham, I discover that it is indeed a Braziltown (perhaps the largest Brazilian settlement in the world), seeing as evidence all kinds of manufactured products that they normally only have in Brazil at the Store 24, while waiting for a taxi to the hotel.
In bluegrass festivals, people pick (i.e. play) everywhere. Stairwells have great acoustics. (There's something to be said for winter (i.e. indoor) festivals)
Then I started playing along with John Williams (my one-lesson fiddle teacher) when I saw Jason Carter peeking at our jam. Jason Carter is greatest fiddler ever in mainstream bluegrass, as far as I'm concerned. So I went outside, and chatted with him a little. He gave a workshop, and showed us some triple stops (who ever said violins can't play chords?). I asked him about his fills, but it was hard for him to demonstrate because he didn't have a band there with him. Luckily, Flynn walks in with a guitar, so I say "hey, I think I have your band here", pointing at him. Unluckily, Flynn shied away and said "you're doing great, man". When I later asked him if I had embarassed him, he said "Yes, but thanks for giving me that opportunity. I blew it."
After his workshop, I took part in a mandolin jammed with the Cantab crowd (we were all in front of August's mandolin shop). I got really into it, and I surprisingly kept up with the likes of Flynn and Chris. In fact, Flynn later described one of my mandolin breaks (i.e. "solos") as "different". "Do you mean jazzy?", I asked. He replied: "More like avant-garde". At the time, I wasn't sure if he was mocking me, but now I believe he wasn't. So it's good encouragement. That morning I had listened 7 or 8 songs from a Bela Fleck CD, so that probably explains the avart-gardiness.
I also played a hot, though traditional fiddle break on "John Hardy", but screwed up another one.
At night, I saw an amazing 20-year-old blind fiddler, Mike Cleveland right in front of me, but I did not dare enter that sacred jam. Mike is by far the fastest fiddler I have ever heard, except perhaps for Vassar Clements, who I've never seen. I even had the honor of being hit by his mandolin on my forehead, but he apologized without even turning around (evil joke!).
At about 3am, I was very tired, and wanted only to sleep. The festival had fallen short of the year before, perhaps because bluegrass was new to me back then. But I didn't have a room, so I managed to doze off in a couch for about 20 minutes, waiting for the cab, along with Zack and John from Berklee. We misinterpreted the train schedule twice and found ourselves in serious danger of frostbite while waiting for it (it was 0 F, -17 C). We waited inside an elevator, but even that got to be too cold after 20 minutes, so we hung out inside a laundromat while we waited for the train.
(notice the missing day separator "-----": it means sleep, not change of day)
Arriving in Boston, I went straight to Marche' and had a fun time with my some of my fellow BONers. I got to play with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thepapayaLucy a little, which was delightful. I'd like to play around with kids more. I remember how fun it was playing with my brother, raflacerda, but that was a long time ago. Maybe I could babysit or something.
The first two times were due to my poor timing of the trip. The second time was because I wanted to visit Cornell. The third was out of desperation for trying to sell my crashed car.
I hate the fact that the CUSTOMER has to call the airline for confirmation, and not the other way. What's worse, I *did* call both the airline and the airport, but nobody would answer.
So now I have no excuse to not catch up with my posts.
-----
Last Tuesday, I wanted to hurry up my packing, so I took a caffeine pill at about 3pm. Bad idea.
After about half an hour, I became all jittery and impatient. My body wasn't jittery, but my mind was. Not only that, but I also got very hungry afterwards. I had to eat a double-size dinner just to satisfy my hunger. But there's more: for hours afterwards, I felt a shortness of breath and unusually tired. When I took a pill at 11pm just before driving to Cornell, the effects were pretty much positive. So I suppose the effect of caffeine is very time-dependent.
The magic spark of bluegrass just wasn't happening at the Cantab, so I followed Jennine to Hanneke's Irish gig at McGann's downtown. Her fiddling is impressive, and she is very enthusiastic, but the acoustics kinda sucked. I say they have the wrong kind of speakers.
-----
Friday night I hung out with Mary, and basically got to know her better. We ordered sandwiches and watched "Y Tu Mama Tambien", and she let me crash at her place. She also gave me a copy of her CD.
-----
Saturday, I took the train to Framingham for the Joe Val Festival. On the train, I met a girl who lived in Angola at the same time I did (but much longer), but she was 6 when I was 12. She even knew Sonnenberg. She came to America just to study and I assume she plans to go back to live in Angola. We started speaking Portuguese, and I tried to maintain a conversation because I liked her accent, but it wasn't going anywhere, so we stopped.
Arriving in Framingham, I discover that it is indeed a Braziltown (perhaps the largest Brazilian settlement in the world), seeing as evidence all kinds of manufactured products that they normally only have in Brazil at the Store 24, while waiting for a taxi to the hotel.
In bluegrass festivals, people pick (i.e. play) everywhere. Stairwells have great acoustics. (There's something to be said for winter (i.e. indoor) festivals)
Then I started playing along with John Williams (my one-lesson fiddle teacher) when I saw Jason Carter peeking at our jam. Jason Carter is greatest fiddler ever in mainstream bluegrass, as far as I'm concerned. So I went outside, and chatted with him a little. He gave a workshop, and showed us some triple stops (who ever said violins can't play chords?). I asked him about his fills, but it was hard for him to demonstrate because he didn't have a band there with him. Luckily, Flynn walks in with a guitar, so I say "hey, I think I have your band here", pointing at him. Unluckily, Flynn shied away and said "you're doing great, man". When I later asked him if I had embarassed him, he said "Yes, but thanks for giving me that opportunity. I blew it."
After his workshop, I took part in a mandolin jammed with the Cantab crowd (we were all in front of August's mandolin shop). I got really into it, and I surprisingly kept up with the likes of Flynn and Chris. In fact, Flynn later described one of my mandolin breaks (i.e. "solos") as "different". "Do you mean jazzy?", I asked. He replied: "More like avant-garde". At the time, I wasn't sure if he was mocking me, but now I believe he wasn't. So it's good encouragement. That morning I had listened 7 or 8 songs from a Bela Fleck CD, so that probably explains the avart-gardiness.
I also played a hot, though traditional fiddle break on "John Hardy", but screwed up another one.
At night, I saw an amazing 20-year-old blind fiddler, Mike Cleveland right in front of me, but I did not dare enter that sacred jam. Mike is by far the fastest fiddler I have ever heard, except perhaps for Vassar Clements, who I've never seen. I even had the honor of being hit by his mandolin on my forehead, but he apologized without even turning around (evil joke!).
At about 3am, I was very tired, and wanted only to sleep. The festival had fallen short of the year before, perhaps because bluegrass was new to me back then. But I didn't have a room, so I managed to doze off in a couch for about 20 minutes, waiting for the cab, along with Zack and John from Berklee. We misinterpreted the train schedule twice and found ourselves in serious danger of frostbite while waiting for it (it was 0 F, -17 C). We waited inside an elevator, but even that got to be too cold after 20 minutes, so we hung out inside a laundromat while we waited for the train.
(notice the missing day separator "-----": it means sleep, not change of day)
Arriving in Boston, I went straight to Marche' and had a fun time with my some of my fellow BONers. I got to play with
thepapayaLucy a little, which was delightful. I'd like to play around with kids more. I remember how fun it was playing with my brother, raflacerda, but that was a long time ago. Maybe I could babysit or something.