beautiful, funny, sad & true

Last night, IrishBand had a great show at a venue called the Virgo and Pisces, and one of my friends drove up from his home on the coast to come see us.  He drove to town, got himself situated in his hotel room, and then called a cab to come pick him up.  He got a Russian cab driver, with a thick Russian accent.

Driver:  “Where you want to go?”

Friend:  “Virgo and Pisces.”

Driver:  “I do not know these streets.”

Friend:  “(takes a beat)  Oh, jeez, of course.  That’s the venue. THE Virgo and Pisces.  (laughs)  Twenty-first and Glisan is the intersection.”

Driver:  “Oh yes.  I know these streets.”

Funny how something so linguistically simple can be completely overlooked and misconstrued sometimes.  It’s all about context, which can be found somewhere near the intersection of Virgo and Pisces.

This weekend was full of gigs and parties and recording, so all I wanted to do today was drink water and do healthy, relaxing things.  I walked over to check out the new Irvington Farmers’ Market, which just started a couple of weeks ago, and is small but really great.  I bought some chicken tacos and a boysenberry soda, and sat in a chair listening to a quartet of musicians play while I ate.  I walked home and one of my friends called to tell me that he’d gone to the Rose Garden this morning (the actual rose garden, in Washington Park, not the stadium), and that sounded like the perfect thing to me too.  I grabbed my camera, jumped in the car, and headed across town.

As luck would have it, I happened to be there at the perfect time.  After I’d been there about fifteen minutes or so, I heard some sort of tribal drumming from the opposite end of the Garden.  Since the Japanese Garden is right near there, I thought maybe Portland Taiko was giving a performance, although the music didn’t sound Japanese at all.  I curtailed my rose activities and went over to investigate.

Coming down the steps were about thirty people in long white and green robes, singing, chanting, clapping and dancing to the rhythms of two large hand drums.  They had arrived in a white Hummer stretch limousine, and everyone in the garden was enthralled by them.  A few of us were standing around watching, since it seemed to be both public and private, if you see what I mean, so it took a while for us rubberneck photographers to see how close we could get without being intrusive.

Finally the groom and bride appeared, and it became obvious that the ceremony was a wedding.  The group was clearly African, and I thought I recognized the language as being Ethiopian.  Two women came to stand near me, and we chatted a bit about how beautiful it all was, and how lucky we felt to be there.

The group started in the main entrance to the garden, and slowly made their way to a handful of other locations.  The bride and groom were often separated from the party, talking privately with the man who appeared to be the equivalent of the celebrant.  When they took a turn and came toward me, in the direction of the steps, I saw that I was in the perfect position for some interesting photos.  The wedding photographer walked next to me, and I said to him, “Can I ask where you’re from?  Are you guys Ethiopian?”  He said yes, they were, and he gave me a I-can’t-believe-you-actually-know-about-Ethiopia smile.

I didn’t realize until they came closer just how exquisite and ornate their clothes were.  Look at all the little details and layers.  They must have been roasting under all that.  It was about eighty degrees today.

I was even lucky enough to capture the two of them in one of the rare moments when they weren’t completely surrounded by people, and had a moment to themselves.  It was a nice moment.  After this shot, I put down my camera and congratulated them as they walked by, and was rewarded with radiant smiles from both of them.

They led the wedding party down the steps, and by this time there was quite a crowd of people gathered around to watch, and to take pictures and videos, so I didn’t have to be stealthy anymore.  I saw an opportunity to get in front of the group as they came down the steps, and I took it.

In the back left of the pictures below, you can clearly see that the couple are off on their own, while the group is carrying on with the singing and chanting.  Also, it’s a bit hard to tell from these pictures, but the teal color of the womens’ dresses was absolutely stunning in the sun.  There was a multitude of hues of greens and blues, and the women shimmered as they walked and danced.

At this point I decided to take a little video, because even the best pictures can’t convey the movement and volume of what was happening.  Like i said, every single other person in the busy garden was enthralled by this group.

You can see in the video that the bride and groom came around the back of the frame, and slowly led the party to the next location, and that’s when I decided to leave them.  I figured that I’d bothered them enough, and I was very excited to come home and see how the pictures came out.  That’s when I noticed that I’d lost the extra battery for my camera.  I retraced my steps as best I could, but the garden is like a maze, so I never did find the battery.   Maybe if you find it you could let me know?  Thanks.  It’s a Canon, about an inch across, and it looks like this.

Anyway.  That was the only small downside to this otherwise wonderful day.  I feel very lucky to have been where I was, and to be able to witness such a beautiful and captivating event.

Oh yeah. . .I would be remiss not to add the picture of the stretch Hummer, which was parked right behind my car.  I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been to navigate that monstrosity through the narrow, winding roads of Washington Park.

I’d like to take a minute to tell you a story in the long string of heart-warming online tales that illustrates the power of the internet to connect people who have been estranged for decades.  It also illustrates the power of music, and the power of a certain kind of mental pathology, too.  You’ll see what I mean.

One of my cohorts from Iron Horse received an out-of-the-blue message on Facebook yesterday, at 1:30 in the morning, from someone he didn’t know, that said, “Are you [misspelled his last name] from [our high school]?  I remember you; we wrote a song in detention.’  He named the song, and correctly wrote out the chorus.  No, I’m not going to quote it here, because then it would be searchable, but he totally nailed it.

His profile was private, there was no picture, and he had a very unusual first name, but my friend didn’t recognize him in any way.  He had eleven online friends, all of whom shared his surname.  My friend responded, “Yeah, that was me.  I kinda remember writing that in detention. . .I changed the lyrics around, and my old band used to play that song.  Do you have a picture or something to jump-start my memory?  What years were you at [our high school]?”

The guy wrote back that he moved away from Yakima in 1987, and that he’s living in California now.  He’s of a certain nationality, and “try to get sum pic’s.”  (I took the liberty of cleaning up his grammar and punctuation before, but it was all typed lower-case, with slightly awkward punctuation.)  My friend accepted his friend request, and we’ll see where the story goes from here.  The two of us can’t help but wonder what the guy’s life is like, since he’s writing to someone he met only one time, in high school detention, twenty two years ago (!), and seems to be hoping to rekindle a friendship where it left off.   I mean, sure,  my friend is a great guy, and we were a pretty good band, but this guy doesn’t even know about the band, because he left town before my friend and I even started it.  Oh, AND.  I should mention that my friend was neither a miscreant nor a ne’er-do-well (I love those two terms, and I love it when I get the opportunity to use them), he was only in detention that one day, and never saw this guy ever again.  He’s not anyone I knew, either then or now, but I haven’t been able to find my yearbooks to investigate him.

Incidentally, speaking of the band, the community access TV station still plays our videos to this day, which completely mystifies my friend and me.  These are not new videos I’m referring to, either.  They were filmed and originally aired during that same time period, from 1987 to ’89, which is when the band was in existence.   We were just a bunch of high school kids, playing some songs that we wrote ourselves, and I can’t imagine why anyone watching now would even enjoy the songs these days, let alone find a bunch of kids from twenty years ago compelling.

Be all that as at may, I admit that it’s gratifying (in a weird way) that they do still play that stuff.  We had a good time making the videos, and like I said, we were a pretty decent band, but we had no delusions about our abilities or chances for stardom, either.  We were just a bunch of kids who had a band, like a million other kids in a million other bands.

Just for fun, here’s a picture from our very first show.  In fact, it could well be of the song in question, too, because I just now remembered that I actually sang the whole second verse of it (and I didn’t sing lead very often), so it seems very likely that this picture was taken during that song.

I just love the oversize mirrored sunglasses, and you can see that I was working hard on Mullet Number One as well.  Gee, I wonder if this was the 80’s?

Meanwhile, back to the topic at hand.

In the interest of full disclosure, and the interest of fairness to this guy, I’ve spent the better part of this month reconnecting with friends from years ago, one of whom had also been twenty years ago (she reads this blog, too, by the way), and it’s been really great for everyone involved.  You probably already knew that if you’re reading this, though, since I’ve written a bit about it lately.  More than once but fewer than three times, in fact, just in case you were counting.   So I have no business knocking the guy for trying.  As human beings, we all are basically social animals (some of us more than others) who are looking for connections wherever we can find them.  But the people I’m talking with are people with whom I had actual relationships and friendships.  They’re based on more than just a one-time meeting, in detention, more than half a lifetime ago.

The title of this entry, incidentally, comes from a book that our high school’s choir director had on the bookshelf in his office, and it seemed apropos to use it here.  Iron Horse shortened it to ‘Mental Game’ and we used it as the title of our album.  I mean cassette.  Oh, how dearly I wish I had a copy of that.  I have a lot of old videos, and tapes, and pictures, and notebooks, but I’m not sure I have that cassette cover floating around anywhere.  I’ll have to do some digging.

I can’t wait to see how this story unfolds.

If you know who made this, please let me know so I can give them credit for being the geniuses that they are.  This is priceless.