Josh Bell plays for pennies

A couple of days ago I read this article about Josh Bell busking at one of the subway stations in Washington DC. There has been a lot of buzz about this. He played and made a paltry $35. But more than that barely anyone even noticed this violin virtuoso playing Bach. A lot of people are reading into this as a sign that people are uneducated about classical music (well that's true...), can't hear greatness or are just too involved with their busy lives to notice great art before them.

Then I read this response by a street musician from New York and went ah ha. It is complicated when you take great art - be it aural or visual - and put it in a different context. Great street musicians are great at playing for their audience. They also have to be great musicians but they need to have the skills to interact with their environment. As someone said of Josh Bell, if he was a good busker he would have chosen the correct time to play when people weren't rushing to get to work and by doing so would be respecting his audience.

I also liked hearing that busking made Josh nervous. Playing for people that had not already bought a ticket to hear him meant he had to validate himself with his playing and that made him nervous. Maybe its just me but playing to the expectations of people who have paid a lot to hear me would freak me out way more.

By the way Josh played the Mendelssohn violin concerto this past Fall with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra at Tulane. He played for a tiny fraction of his regular fee as a way to give back to this city and its orchestra.

All Hail Easter

Today it is cold!! We went to a friend's for a cook-out. We did cook "out" but definitely ate "in"! About two days ago it started to get cold at night and we brought out our duvet again. Today we were bemoaning Entergy and shivering in our shotgun.

And yes, today we actually had HAIL!! This cold snap is affecting a big part of the country - Dazza's Dad was reporting 19 degrees in Indianapolis today. I realise in a very short time I'm going to be dreaming of a day like today. When I post my witterings and groans on the heat I really must remember to link to this post!!

However this isn't really what I envisioned for Easter in N'awlins. There are Easter parades tomorrow - I'm hoping to brave some of the shiver effect and see some of them. But I have a feeling I'll be jealous of the Easter Bunny all wrapped up in his furry suit!

Storm that Bastille

So much I could blog about today - but I've got so much to do (include shower.....). So here is the brief version:

Last night we went to TEACH NOLA fundraiser/awareness shindig at The Howling Wolf in the CBD. Its a great non-profit trying to get good teachers to teach in post-Katrina NOLA. Please check it out and if you are passionate and motivated and want to move here, perhaps this is for you.

The we went with our friends to Tipitinas to see Yo La Tengo play. Tipitinas is a funky place with a great atmosphere. There was some strange music from the opening band (dare I say it but we actually heard bad music in N'awlins!!) and Yo La Tengo seemed bent on mimicking it to begin with but luckily chilled out into their more standard indie emo style.

Today I read some fantastic stuff in Ashley's blog about storming the Bastille (ie city hall, those responsible) on Bastille Day and also he's put up an "official" weblink to the term Federal Flood in Wikipedia. Some NOLAites refer to the Katrina "incident" as the Federal Flood because it wasn't a hurricane that shattered this city it was the failure of the Federal levees.

And finally today was nicely rounded off by the Easter Bunny sending a package from Indiana with two cute stuffed toy peeps and other goodies.

Forecasting the Storms of Entergy

Today I did something I haven't done in quite a while. I actually read a hard copy of a newspaper. We have some dear, old friends in town for a few days and we walked to Rue De La Course for coffee (photo) and to peruse the local rag and the NY Times.

In today's paper I found two stories that I found quite alarming. The first was to do with our storm forecasting capabilities in this country. Apparently we have a less than satisfactory means of predicting hurricanes. This is alarming. We need 400 million bucks to put a Quik-SCAT satelllite into orbit. I personally think this is money that would be totally justifiable. However its not going to be spent and on top of that the Feds are already $700,000 below what the funding should be for hurricane research in this country as it is.

Maybe its just me but surely the huge costs ensuing from Katrina would make hurricane awareness, prediction and evacuation a top priority in this country? But that's just little old naive moi!

The second article which made me mutter was an opinion piece about our lovely energy company in N'awlins, Entergy. Our bill was quite shocking last month and some friends of our had even worse ones ($500 - that's Cleveland winter prices - and a big apartment at that!!). So I read this article with interest. The conclusion particularly had my attention:

The Utility Committee is open to exploring any regulatory structure that will bring rates down. We welcome proposals from community groups.

But let's not repeat our past mistakes under some form of statewide regulation that dumps disproportionate costs onto New Orleans ratepayers.

I think I need to read the paper in hard copy more often.

Chocolate Billboard

OK, I know this isn't about N'awlins but I couldn't resist. Shoppers in Covent Garden in London ate a Thorntons Chocolate Billboard that weighed 860lbs and took 300 hours to make in only 3 hours!!

Yes in the UK "Pancake Tuesday" definitely pales into insignificant wimpishness compared with Mardi Gras here but we do eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate and particularly at Easter - the shelves bulge with Easter eggs - America has a long way to go to catch up. Thorntons is good chocolate - I wish I'd been strolling through Covent Garden today - yum!

Monk

A couple of nights ago I was with some friends and colleagues in the DBA on Frenchman. We were fortunate also to have Joe, the new bass player for the new Monk institute there too - he's a friend of one of my colleague's. I hadn't heard about the Monk Institute - and especially not about it coming to New Orleans.

In brief it is probably one of the best, if not, the best jazz program in the country. Seven jazzers get room and board, lessons with the very best, education experience and a stipend for two to four years. For a jazzer its like winning the lottery. With jazz greats like Herbie Hancock, Wayne SHorter, Terance Blanchard, and Thelonius Monk Jr. guiding them, its a dream come true.

This exceptional program has until now been in Washington DC and LA. It is such a wonderful gift that it has now come to New Orleans - for the next seven years!! There are so many bad things to read about this city right now (murder, levees, corruption) that it is just "pure dead brilliant" (to use a good old Glasgow phrase) to hear about this coming to this city. This is where jazz was born and in its time of need, having a resurgence in the very best in jazz returning here is just the best news!!

I'm looking forward to hearing these guys play.

The Whole Expat Thang

I've been "tagged". Katie at Longayelander has issued a challenge of a set of questions pertaining to the expat experience. So here goes...

5 things that you love about your new country

1. You can be who you want to without the constraints of a set society structure and the go get it attitude.
   
2. My wonderful friends.
3. The healthfood stores.
4. The music (in N'awlins especially).
5. New Orleans, New York, San Fransisco, The Rockies, The Desert, Road trips, Utah, Hacky Sack, Hanging out.....

4 things you miss about your old country

1. Family and friends.
2. The air and the countryside - "God's own country" as my Mum says.
3. The self-deprecating humour.
4. Just home.

3 things that annoy you about your new country

1. Having to explain about being Scottish all the time (this was mostly in Ohio - in New Orleans they don't care so much...- but in a good way!)
2. The media - everyone seems to care more about American Idol than how their country is viewed in the world.
3. Suburbia.

2 things that surprise you about your new country

1. Mardi Gras in New Orleans (and New Orleans in general)
2. That "America" is just a concept - Miami, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, New Orleans they are all so different - its so hard to pin this country down.

1 thing that you'd really miss if you had to leave your new country

1. The sense of possibility in everything.
   

There I did it Katie. However I think I have way more to add - so here goes...

Being an expat is an odd existence. I think it is an existence that is becoming more common and certainly prevalent amongst my generation. I have many good friends married to spouses from halfway across the world. I have many good friends that live in far flung places.

This odd existence, for me, is defined by never feeling completely at home in either place anymore. I have been in the US for seven years and my sense of homesickness has faded somewhat over that time. My first year I was very homesick. Now I miss my family and friends just as much but I don't get depressed because I can't drive through the Scottish mountains - although I would still like to do that tomorrow.

My association with certain things have changed. I no longer hanker after Cadbury's Dairy Milk, or fish and chips. I dislike the supermarkets of Sainsburys and Waitrose and love Wholefoods. I still hate American TV - but know that's because of the bombardment of adverts. I still love British TV. But with the developments of the Internet I can create my "own" hodgepodge of good TV instead.

I still hate the American media and welcome Jeremy Paxman's direct and often times rude, questioning as a breath of fresh air. However I love the gutsy impassioned left of center activists in this country. I love the vegans, the environmentalists, the idealists. I love Harpers, The Utne Reader, and Mental Floss. But I miss reading the Guardian in hard copy and settling down with coffee and the Observer on a Sunday morning.

Being an expat, to me, means being able to create my own life with less constraints - my very presence is different. It means living between two worlds and in both of them at the same time. It means missing dear friends in other time zones. And missing big family gatherings. It means creating a life out of good aspects of two experiences.