chris must depart

there's a lunacy, an absent minded eccentricity, a goofiness, if you will, that comes to the aid of artists and helps them to step outside of the veil that hangs before the comings and goings, the conventions, niceties and ordinary, workaday garden variety hypocrisy that forms the landscape of everyday existence. in order to form the kind of observations that must be made to create something new in this hackneyed and worn down world, the person who would make a song or a painting or some rendering of some portion of this sometimes mundane world must stand apart from it somehow and in this act of standing apart, perhaps overstep the frontier of what many would normally call normal. this special (and hopefully mild) form of mania is often marked by a blissful ignorance and sometimes the victorious ecstasy of creation. however, there are times when it is a burden.

lindsay, my girlfriend, asked me if i should maybe call the airline and see if i could change my flight to the next day but i absolutely had to try to make my flight.

that's just how it is.

if one has a gig and one wishes to maintain the perfection of rock and roll chivalry, there's no way to bend on these kind of things. already, my mind was bending itself to the task of finding the hole in the fabric of the world, which in this case was new york city's evening rush hour, through which i would reach newark airport, my flight, stavanger, norway and the writing workshop.

samantha, my nine year old daughter, in the full flower of her priceless manner said, "well, if you make it you'll have a good story." (for the sake of anyone reading this, i hope that is the case)

i looked at the upturned faces of my pretty daughter and my pretty girlfriend and realized that i would have to say goodbye to them right there and then.

goodbyes at the best of times are not a specialty of mine.

i looked at the upturned faces of my pretty daughter and my pretty girlfriend and i felt a pang, a bone longing from my heart that tightened in my throat, stung my nostrils and pinched the inside corners of my eyes.

"i have to go," i told them.

this was not how i had planned to say goodbye to them before an absence of twelve days.

the afternoon had grayed somehow. what had seemed a lively and merry come and go of traffic, waiters and patrons became, for a moment, a shapeless, shambling mass of static, teetering meaninglessly around a vacuum of love and imagined loss on the verge of an adventure.

i had to tear myself away.

scandinavian airlines flight number 910 wasn't going to wait for me. scandinavian airlines' pilots, executives and flight attendants, the air traffic controllers and the other passengers tend to get a little shirty, they take it amiss, they positively look askance at this modern laxity in singers who feel that they can just traipse along to the airport whenever it is they feel like it. no amount of talk about adorable daughters and sweet, curly red haired girlfriends will appease their inclination to depart without these sorts of singers and fly to stavanger, norway leaving them to fend for themselves and cross the atlantic ocean some other way, they care not how, as long as it doesn't involve their (scandinavian airlines' pilots, executives and flight attendants, the air traffic controllers and the other passengers) lollygagging about waiting for chuckle-headed rock and roll singers to say goodbye to their daughters and girlfriends, no matter how adorable, sweet, curly or red haired they (the daughters and girlfriends) are.

i kissed my daughter and hugged her, never wanting to let go of her and then i kissed and hugged my girlfriend, never wanting to let go of her either. then i hugged my daughter again and kissed her sweet, bright forehead that sits in front of her wonderful mind and with a tearing in my ragged, rugged heart i turned and ran down the street.

friday, september 18, 2008

how to end up in a small town in norway with nothing but a computer and the shirt on your back

on a pretty afternoon at an italian restaurant in my neighborhood, i was sitting at a sidewalk table with my pretty daughter and my pretty girlfriend. the phone rang and i saw from the screen on the device that the caller was my friend arne "honda" høvda from stavanger, norway calling. i was happy that he was calling because i'd been meaning to have a little chat with him all day on account of the fact that i myself was leaving to go to stavanger, norway to join honda and some other talented writers for a songwriting workshop on an island in a fjord near that seaside town the next day.

or so i thought.

honda asked me how i was doing and i told him i was doing fine and he asked me if i was all set and i told him that i was even though i hadn't packed yet. i have a process of packing ninety percent of which, in the words of yogi berra, is half mental. i make lists in my mind and obsess about the stuff i don't want to forget and then finally i take the stuff from my mind and put it in a suitcase making sure to forget one or two key items after all.

it's a half-assed process but at least it's mine.

anyway, i held the to phone to my ear, gazing through the pretty afternoon at my pretty daughter and my pretty girlfriend and told honda i was all set and that i'd see him the day after tomorrow.

there was a pause.

"you mean tomorrow." honda said.

i smiled and patiently corrected my friend. god, in his infinite wisdom, does not hand out willy-nilly to every one of his children the mental precision of a chris barron.

"the flight leaves tomorrow," i explained, "but then i fly overnight so i get there the day after tomorrow." (silly)

"no, but your flight is tonight."

i think in this episode of these chronicles so far i've managed to convey that these particular events took place on a lovely afternoon. my daughter and girlfriend were lovely too, in fact they were smiling radiantly in the september sunlight that seemed to mantle all the world like a canopy of sweetness held aloft by pins through the fabric of heaven. let's just take it as fact that the hum of the city around us had laid aside it's more frantic paces for a rhythm that seemed synchronized with the order of things and that this order of things had unfurled itself into a sort of grand dance that we will call, "a lovely afternoon."

well, at honda's words this "lovely afternoon" lurched slightly and i'm pretty sure i heard the sound of a phonograph record skipping. in fact, i'm not sure a part of my skull didn't pop off allowing some of the rusted gears and broken springs that seem to suffice as my brain to fall out onto the table cloth with a muffled rattle and lay among the stuffed mushrooms and silverware.

"you're joking," i said, not because i found anything the slightest bit amusing about his words (in point of fact, i found them to be not a little gauche and in very questionable taste) but more because that's just what people seem to say in these sorts of moments.

honda said that he was not joking.

"what time is it?" i asked.

"it's about ten minutes after four, your time," honda said.

"and what time is my flight?" i asked.

"it's at five forty."

an hour and a half.

i think i might have said something like, lord love a duck or sweet mother of abraham lincoln but i don't exactly remember because i was calculating in my head the time to newark airport versus the traffic, the fact that i had not packed, the prevailing winds and all the things a manhattanite must consider when he is catching a plane to stavanger, norway out of the crashing, crumbling ruins of a lovely new york afternoon.

with rush hour just starting i gave myself chances on par with those of a snowball in a parka in an oven in hell's hottest kitchen.


to be continued...

may 4th, 2008

baltimore to nyc

it's about ten minutes to eleven and we don't have to leave till noon but i'm wide awake although we were up to close to five am watching "when we were kings" on jon's loyd's computer in brett bass and phil cimino's room. to save a little money, jon, joe coot's and i tripled up in our room at the sheraton city center hotel. the morning sun sneaks around the gaps in the thick curtains and really i'm pretty anxious to be on my way. part of me would love for the tour to continue another month but as it's over, i'd pretty much like to get on the road and get home.

last night we played at the 8x10 in baltimore. i've played that club many times. several times with the spin doctors and once or twice as a solo act. rob clores of the give daddy five and i went there and did a duo in, i think, '97 on one of the nights the yankees one the world series. we were watching the game at a sports bar across the street. we came into the club did the gig and then went back to the sports bar and caught the last inning or two as luis soho got a base hit or something crucial and won the game and series.

later

on the jersey turnpike. the home stretch. everybody's calling making arrangements for getting home. the guys need kris hydell, the man with a van, to help and he's illusive as usual. we come over the little rise just before exit 13 and the oil refineries smoke and the great tanks with their partial spiral stairs and the wires that criss cross and the great masses of pipes and smoke stacks lay in wait by the crouching pulaski skyway. newark, new jersey stands by as we pass on the twisting turnpike, the elizabeth seaport and the billboards. we come around on an overpass and those crane things that look like massive animals loom over the stacks of ship containers all beneath the silent and still cumulus clouds. newark airport and now we're on exit 14c behind a sunday driver. up the ramp and around him and we see manhattan shining in welcome to the time bandits triumphant home from the return of the son of southern fried tour. manhattan. we cross one of the hudson's harbor tributaries and the ramp takes us over bayonne, new jersey. the tour is done. there's banter in the white flash, our erstwhile van. we pass behind the statue of liberty who's back is to us. her eye is on the atlantic. she's watching for sailors. we're mariners but of the asphalt. asphalt mariners, come home to gotham, new amsterdam, and the sweet island of manhattan. we pay the toll by the liberty science center, limbs stiff and longing for the sidewalk that's beyond the river, beyond jersey city. helicopters zig and zag. the sun looks on and we're crawling across the spine of america's east coast in holland tunnel traffic. so close and yet so far.

do tours ever end? you come home but you're still searching. the world sits there for the taking but the taking never stops and who's taking whom? do you ever arrive? is there really any destination or just stops on a trip that never ends?


we stop and go. it's been three thousand six hundred and sixty four miles. rounding the overpass over the tunnel that goes under the hudson all with the southern fried world behind us.

april 30th, 2008

charlotte, nc to chapel hill, nc

on the road with the time bandits. 85 north slips under the wheels of the van and the day is bright blue. the white dogwoods are in high bloom and the purple thistle, tall on the divide, stands around in the tall grass in the spring sun.

seventy five miles an hour.

in our van, the white flash, we make desultory conversation but for the most part it's the sound of the tires on the asphalt and the whistle of the wind.

we stop at a gas station and i buy a bandana.

the time bandits and i stand outside in the shinning day and crack each other up while phil and brett smoke american spirits. joe puts a bottle of vitamin water on his head and walks around, his spine stiff and his hands out from his side palms down. i say that we should drill a hole in the roof of the white flash (our van) so that he can ride all the way to chapel hill with the plastic bottle on his head.

last night we played the double door inn in charlotte. it's a pretty well known joint. eric clapton wandered in there in nineteen eighty two and did a few numbers with the band on stage at the time and that's the room's biggest claim to fame as far as i know. it's a dingetastic little room with a bar on the left as you go in and black and whites in frames all over the bar of the hundreds of acts that have played there. in front of the stage there are a few rows of stadium seats, the kind where the seat part folds up on a spring when you stand. i'd never seen that in a club before. it was a cool, kind of lo-fi touch.

we'd had two days off in charlotte at a pretty cheap hotel where the venue put us. sketchy. there was an element of lurking criminality such as the loose woman who had the sallow complexion of a crack addict. she approached phil for a cigarette on our first night there. later our suspicions of the neighborhood were vindicated and confirmed when on the local news there was a report of an fbi raid on a neighboring hotel where arrests were made for drug trafficking, prostitution and money laundering. funny on these low budget tours how you end up having a couple days off in a place that's as spiritually bereft as music is rich. it's a grand equalization seemingly where pleasure and ennui balance out on a scale that is invisible but palpable.

on rolls the white flash. joe coots sighs and turns on the radio. jon loyd in his shades chews gum and gazes out the windshield from the first bench of the van. in the middle bench brett bass reads the book i picked up for him in chatanooga when i bought the motley crue book, the dirt, (good read) and phil cimino is in the back snoozing. on rolls the flash into our rock and roll destiny, crawling on the back of the world as the sun looks on.

bob dylan and i sit in a hotel room high above birmingham with the all lights quavering in the warm evening air. his harmonica splits the dim sky with a whining that pulls the strings inside my blue heart.

march 23, 2008

there is a moment when extreme disappointment sets in.

a tearing sensation in the heart, or rather, a premonition of a tearing sensation because sadness is a black flower in the dark, dirty ground of the soul that tears its way out of the earth, blooms and releases it’s melancholy perfume all in stages, leaf by leaf, petal by petal, thorn by thorn.

those of you who have followed these chronicles will know already that on thursday i was going to carry la virgen del gran poder (a huge living room sized religious relic with a statue of the blessed virgin and all kinds of trappings of gold and silver and flowers and candles) in a procession at the semana santa in malaga. (see my previous entry for more explanation)(see also my pictures in the album marked: semana santa)

the night before (wednesday) there had been rain and all the processions had been canceled. there was a report that there would be rain on thursday too but only into the early evening and then it would go away. i woke thursday morning and the sky was thundering and the rain fell like, well... rain and i was sort of reassured because that kind of rain doesn’t usually last unless someone has been specifically instructed to build an ark.

as the morning turned into afternoon, the sky cracked open and the sun came out and we were optimistic. evening rolled around and i was nervous. not about the weather but because i was about to do something that i’m not sure any american has done. i was certainly the only american this year and nobody i asked knew of any dude from new york city ever carrying a tronno in the semana santa in malaga. this thing weighs a couple of tons. it was going to be a physical trial. there i was, paco’s friend, an american, if i didn’t comport myself with honor, they might think i voted for george bush or something, they might think that it was my fault we didn’t sign the kyoto accord, they might think i was building all those mcdonald’s.

after a siesta in the afternoon, i put on my black tie, my white shirt, my black shoes and a blue suit with a very thin, faint rose colored pinstripe. i even went out on the balcony and took some pictures of myself before getting nervous some more and deciding that the blue suit wasn’t working with the black tie and changing into a grey suit.

paco, luz and paco’s sister lourdes and i went to the church. luz and lourdes were going to be nazerenos in the procession. nazerenos wear robes and these tall conical hoods called capilotes (i don’t know how to spell any of these words) and walk with these huge candles that are like four feet tall. luz is a huge rock star in spain and latin america for that matter so it was super cool that she was going to be walking along in this procession, her face covered with a hood. people would have flipped if they’d known.

so we all get to the church and paco and i put on our white gloves and black robes that are kind of like the ones monks would wear and tie them off with red ropes with tassels that bumped my feet when i walked around. paco’s and mine had to be tied for us by a woman who was an officer of the church. there is a funky knot involved that we didn’t know how to tie. luz and lourdes put on their robes and paco and i went to the bar next door and had a quick whiskey.

we came back and went to the big garage kind of thing where they keep the tronnos. (that’s the big parade float thing with the statue of the virgin mary and the gold and silver and stuff that we were going to carry in the procession) when we got to our places, (i’m b-4, the forth guy back on the second beam from the right if you’re facing the tronno and paco is a-7, pretty much next to me) all the guys were totally psyched to see me. our friend pedro luis gomez had put an item in his paper, sur, (sur is what the paper is called) that i was going to be carrying la virgen del gran poder or the virgin of great power, if you will. i had kind of spontaneously carried her last year. that’s why i was invited to this year. so they all know me and i have this way of becoming an instant mascot of sorts anyway. so everybody was patting me on the shoulder and laughing and saying stuff in super fast malagño spanish that i didn’t really understand but it was cool and i had the amazing sensation once again of being incredibly lucky and in a place that no tourist would ever find himself and being accepted even though i’m some random foreigner and feeling that i must have some inner quality that puts me in these places. obviously, i have great friends but i seem to be able to avoid blowing it and getting chucked out.

there’s a bell at the front of the tronno. there’s a major domo who rings the bell. four quick rings means get ready, two distinct ones and we put out shoulders under the beams, one more and we pick her up.

we’re kidding around and taking some pictures and stuff and then it’s time to go. i’ve been waiting a year for this. the streets are full of people waiting to see us leave the church and they’ll be lined up along the street the whole way. all of malaga is out in the streets waiting for these beautiful uplifting processions. i’ve flown across the atlantic ocean to be here.

ding, ding, ding ding!

we take our places.

ding, ding!

like one person, two hundred of us put our shoulders under the beams that hold up la virgen del gran poder.

ding!

we lift her up and shift our weight from left to right so that she’s swaying majestically back and forth. we took her a short way out of her house and put her down.

now we were out among the people. a tiny girl with amber hair and gigantic eyes. i smiled at her. she reached toward me. her mother held her out and i took her little hand in my white glove for a second.

another ring of the bell and we start walking. it’s a pregnant moment. someone shouts, viva la perchalera! long live the fisherwoman. that’s her nickname. la perchalera. malaga is an ancient fishing village. she’s a symbol of their community, their livelihood. viva la perchalera! the crowd answers with a rousing shout.

VIVA!

again. viva la perchalera!

VIVA!

viva la perchalera!

VIVA!

arriba la perchalera! (up with la perchalera!)

ARRIBA!

my bones were smiling.


and then.

we got about thirty feet. not even to the end of the tiny side street that leads to the building that houses the tronnos and about three drops of rain fell.

like, three drops of rain.

a murmur went through all of us. a shadow fell over the face of the night. the bell rang. we put down la perchalera. paco went, oh hooo, which in spanish is like uh, oh.

and that was pretty much it. it wasn’t raining but a wave of panic seemed to go through the officials of the cofradia (the organization that puts out the procession).

cancelado. canceled. we stood there for a long time. someone asked if we could take a turn around the neighborhood.

no.

we would raise her a little in the driveway thing but we weren’t going anywhere.

there were clouds but you could see some stars and the moon was leering down from the patchy sky.

things got a little ugly. we didn’t want to put the tronno down. guys were yelling stuff. we got to the edge of the street and there was a signal to go backwards and the guys all shouted, adelante! forward! there was mutiny in the air.

i couldn’t really wrap my head around what was going on. to me, no is an early form of yes. i don’t usually accept it as an answer but in this case there wasn’t anything i could do and it wasn’t even raining. three or four times i asked paco if there was any chance they would change their decision. no. we never got out of the church grounds.

there was a lot of standing around and what the spanish call, mala leche. bad milk. hard feelings. the moon and the stars seemed to mock us.

then we picked up la virgen de la gran poder, put her back in her building and went our ways. we all hugged and shrugged and everyone said i had to come back next year and i said, oh well, another year in the gym.

we tied our tunics to the beams on the tronno and plodded out beneath the scowling moon and her glowering, lowering skies into the crestfallen streets.

we made our way to lourdes’ house and in five minutes she had a meal on the table. this delicious pork with a arabic kind of sauce and a salad of these thin heads of lettuce cut into quarters, tomato and a little tuna with vinegar and olive oil.

lourdes’ daughter, conchita, paco and luz’s niece, had us cracking up. she’s almost three. she calls me teetobal. we were asking her, que es un gible? (what is a gible?) gible (pronounced: khee-blay) is a word that she’s come up with and we were laughing, getting her to explain it, her hands making little three year old explanatory gestures. apparently, it’s not an animal, sometimes it lives in a tunnel, it’s in a bag and it’s pink. got it? cool.

milagros, a friend from the cofradia, had invited us to a private room in a fancy restaurant so we said goodbye to lourdes, and her husband, philipe, and conchita the gible and went to another neighborhood near the cathedral. we found the restaurant and went to a second door and knocked. in the hallway there was one of those old prints called the music lesson with a couple of figures playing lutes and stuff. one of them, a woman, had a lute up on her knee in a pretty rocking pose that seemed a little anachronous. i joked that it was the abuela de la abuela (the grandmother of the grandmother) of keith richards and we were laughing when the door opened.

inside it was smoky and warm and on a table on the side of the room were large platters of food and there were tables full of matrons and patrons and a lot of air force officers. milagros came over and we sat down, demurring offers of food and having instead a whiskey.

paco was saying what a shame it was to cancel the procession for just a few drops of rain and milagros agreed but explained that in the procession there are millions of euros worth of patrimonio or inheritance, religious relics passed down from generation to generation. valuable stuff like paintings and silver and gold, not to mention hundreds of velvet tunics that cost a couple hundred euros apiece and the tronnos. to have them rained on would be a catastrophe.

yeah, well...

she told us that there was another little procession back at the church where they took the statues off the tronnos and brought them back into the church and that it was muy precioso (really precious) and would we like to come? so we went back to the church of the perchalera and went into a bar nearby. milagros said she’d come tell us when the procession was going to start.

we had fun in the bar having a whiskey and asking the waitress if she knew what was a gible and pretty soon milagros told us to come over to the building next to the church where the tronnos are kept.

the green doors slowly opened.

they had taken the statues off of their tronnos. one is of the blessed virgin, la perchalera and the other is from the other tronno, a christ called nuestro padre jesus de la misericordia and his nickname in the barrio (the neighborhood) is chiquito (little guy). these statues are very, very beautifully carved out of wood with loving detail and they’re both pretty old. they looked small taken down from the tronnos which i realized are these glorified pedestals or maybe i should say glorious because "glorified" implies that they are overrated.

the heads of the cofradia picked the two statues up and rested them on their shoulders on two beams apiece, about eight people to each statue and slowly, solemnly walked into the church.

at this point the time had gotten to be about four in the morning.

inside the church they put the statues in front of the altar and said a short mass. the silence apart from the responses and prayers of the people gathered in the pews was palpable, a presence in of itself. i gazed at the statue of the virgin of great power, la virgen del gran poder, la perchelera. she wore a silver crown surmounted by a corona of silver flames, a mantle of deepest blue, a robe of deep blue with floral patterns of silver and a red rope belt with tassels of gold, her hands palms up in front of her heart in an expression of grief.


after the service everyone lined up and filed passed first chiquito to kiss the back edge of his foot, an attendant touching the place with a white cloth after each kiss, and then la perchalera to kiss her hand. then the heads of the cofradia took them and took them into their places in an aclove to the side and they slowly, solemnly disappeared among the stones of the church. it was a forlorn sort of goodbye.

people were crying.

out on the street paco said, more that thirty years and i’ve never been that close to the virgin and you get that close your first year.

christobal, eres un monstro (you’re a monster).

from there we went around to the cofradia where they have the virgin that is generally referred to as la esperanza. outside, the ground was covered with the herb rosemary which they throw out from the tronno and people pick up for good luck. this is the tronno that the screen idol, antonio banderas carries. (did i mention that antonio banderas is from malaga and carries this particular tronno every year? he’s a cool guy. he hasn’t forgotten where he’s from.) our friend diego, the major domo of the tronno, who saw that i had a new camera and showed up the next night with a small, pocket sized tripod as a gift for me, had invited us to come by the esperanza after we got done with our procession and take a turn carrying her. nobody carried anything as their procession was canceled too but people were hanging out. we all exchanged condolences and paco, luz and i checked out la esperanza up close.

it’s a beautiful tronno and huge. it’s for sure the second heaviest in malaga maybe the heaviest. it’s covered in amazing workmanship. there isn’t a square inch that isn’t decorated in a baroque masterstroke of craftsmanship. along the base are these beautifully carved saints and scenes from the passion that are painted wood, the folds of their clothing masterfully depicted and each garment carefully painted with a different intricate textile pattern. their mournful, upraised eyes, hooked noses, muscled limbs and crooked fingers all painstakingly rendered by the woodcarver’s knife.

i chatted with macarena, diego’s daughter, who pointed out that the ceiling had been painted with the faces of members of the church. the face of that woman kneeling, she said, pointing to a point on the ceiling, was her’s. i told her that she seemed like a cool person and that she didn’t have to make stuff up to impress people. she looked at me blankly for a moment and then realized that i had to be kidding. i grinned.

no te creo. i don’t believe you.

but i did because it was true and we had a laugh and diego took us under the tronno where the submarineros (the submariners) were. antonio banderas (did i mention him?) is a submarinero. these guys are actually under the tronno the whole time. they can’t see where they’re going and i bet it gets pretty hot and stuffy down there. paco asked where antonio’s spot is and diego said it was right where i happened to be standing. i looked on the beam next to me and there was antontio’s name. there were a bunch of guys still under there who apparently hadn’t been out from under all night. they didn’t want to leave i guess. i understood how they felt.

we said our goodbyes and i told macarena to work on the lying thing and we walked across town looking for a place to get hot chocolate and churros.

it was late.

they were cleaning the streets. i was kind of crestfallen. paco was a little bitter. luz was luz. lourdes’ cooking, several whiskeys as milagros’ guest, the little procession, the visit with diego and la esperaza had all been really cool but they hadn’t filled the gap made by the canceled procession.

if it had been storming i wouldn’t have felt so bad. things get rained out. but the crazed moon stared down with a lopsided grimace from the star crowded and bone dry heavens.

so many of the crappy things that happen in life seem to happen for no reason.

i’d been ready for a battle of sorts, a physical and spiritual trial. it hadn’t happened and now they were washing the narrow streets with high powered hoses and all the chocolate and churros places were closed and the street light shrieked on the wet ways and we made our way home thought a park with orange trees in bloom, their perfume surrounding us like a shroud, like the nights cool consoling hand on the fevered brow of tomorrow.

we had stayed up all night...

and it never rained.

wednesday, march 19, 2008

let me kind of explain semana santa in malaga a little better.

there are all these processions. they each have two tronnos or thrones that are these kind of parade floats that are carried by people. the tronnos weigh in the order of tons and usually consist of an ornate base made of wood and gold and silver and they have a statue that’s usually a christ or a blessed virgin but sometimes a scene from the new testament. these are carried through the streets of malaga accompanied by drum choruses and bands and a tremendous entourage of people in these colored tunics and pointed hats called naceranos (i have no idea how to spell that) some of these carry finely crafted banners on silver and gold masts or man sized crucifixes or other relics of the church they represent and bringing up the rear are regular people just following the procession along as an act of devotion.

why?

well, because it’s cool for one thing. the spanish have a word, rollo (again, i have no idea how to spell that). rollo (pronounced: roy-oh) is the ambiance, the overall combination of sights, sounds, smells and feelings that a place or experience gives the participant. semant santa in malaga has a rollo that has to be felt to be believed.

imagine an intersection of narrow streets in a funky southern spanish city neighborhood. it’s crowded with people who are shoulder to shoulder, friends, neighbors, family. in the street is a work of art in the form of a tremendous religious relic the size of your living room being carried on the shoulders of about two hundred men in maroon or white or purple or black tunics and white gloves. the marching band is playing a spanish march, complete with lilting trumpets, middle eastern melodies and shrill harmonies that call to mind the slavish effort of the bearers of this massive tronno (remember: the tronnos are the big parade float things with the statues on them). the air is full of incense. clouds of it whisp in the street lights and fill your head with an ancient misty confusion. the drummers, dozens of them, keep the time for the steps of the tronno bearers. have you ever stood in a small echoing street in the presence of thirty or forty or fifty drummers? spanish ones? it’s like dancing thunder. everyone’s eyes are full of candle light and street light and devotion. devotion to these symbols of their neighborhood, their hope, their city, their past, present, future; everyone with eyes upraised. the tronno moves to the music of the drums and the brass. it’s mass sways in the impossible light. light that fills the silver with silver, gold with gold and darkness with hope.

march 17, 2008

here in madrid the airport is something of a wonder. brightly colored steel beams in long thin cones, i suppose you’d call them, hold up high a ceiling made of long wooden slats arranged in waves and the pattern is repeated again and again along the long way so that it creates a perspective.

i’m pretty tired. my flight left new york’s john f. kennedy airport at ten of the post meridian last night. now it’s midday in madrid and my flight is at four in the afternoon. just one of those connections that doesn’t really work out. now i’m going to try to take a nap but the benches in this part of the airport aren’t very conducive on account of the fact that they have these arm rests in the way.

later

well, the arm rests didn’t prevent me from sleeping for a couple of hours. i found two benches across from each other, turned my rolling carryon bag on it’s side so that it had a bit more height and put my head on one bench, my feet on the other and my hip on the bag.

yes. i slept that way for a couple of hours. how? you might as well know. i’m something of a road dog.

i’m in madrid airport on my way to malaga for the semana santa, in english, the saints week. during the week leading up to easter, in cities all over spain and all the catholic world for that matter, church organizations called cofradias put out processions which have these tronnos or thrones that are sort of like parade floats but different in three ways immediately apparent to the casual observer.

one, they are of religious significance, each one bearing a blessed virgin or a christ or a biblical scene.

two, they are works of art made of gold, silver and expensive woods, covered in candles, flowers, tremendous mantles of brocaded silk and of course the statues themselves.

and three, in spite of the fact that they weigh in the order of tons, they are carried by men and this year, carrying the virgin of great power, one of those men will be me.

as you might guess, this is pretty unheard of for an american to be carrying a tronno in the semana santa in malaga, spain. how did this come about you ask? well, i’ve been coming to spain to visit my friends paco perez brian and luz casal since the late twentieth century. and in these seventeen years or so, we’ve become what the spanish call, grandes amigos, or great friends. for a number of years, in fact, throughout our friendship, paco and luz have been raving about the semana santa in malaga. i had always come to spain for the feria in seville. the two events are timed so that to go to both i would have to be in spain for about a month and as much as i would love to be here for that long or longer, i’ve never been able to put that much time aside. finally the year before last instead of going to the feria (which, by the way, is a whole story, nay, world unto itself that i must cover sometime in these chronicles) i came to the semana santa.

now the semana santa in malaga maybe needs to be seen to be understood. i try to explain to people and they’re like, yeah ok, so people carry these huge beautiful things through the street. so what? i had trouble imagining it before i saw it too. you see, the whole city is out in the streets to watch and this goes on for a week. it’s a massive party. the city all but shuts down and as these tronnos (remember: they’re the floats with the statues on them) pass certain spots they stop and someone will come out onto a beautiful balcony and sing a spanish aria to them or they’ll meet another tronno in a square and the guys carrying will make the tronnos dance together. see, this has been going on for hundreds of years so the different tronnos represent different neighborhoods and groups of society. i’ll try to get more into that as the week goes on.

so here i am, this random american (but not so random because i’m lucky enough to be friends with some of the coolest people in spain) at the semana santa. my friend paco has been carrying the virgin of the great power or in spanish, la virgen de la grand poder since he was sixteen. two years ago i met up with him and la virgen de la grand poder at a certain point in the rout and got a can of coke at a bar with a bit of something to help restore the tissues. he and the guys near his spot asked if i’d like to take a turn carrying the tronno. i did and i couldn’t believe how heavy it was. i found out later that that was because paco is maybe six inches shorter than i and he is positioned back from the end of the beams on which the tronno is extended. the weight of the tronno actually flexes these beams so that at their ends they are further from the ground than they are nearer to the platform that holds the statue so being back there i was actually bearing more weight because i’m taller that the guys placed around me. after my turn, all the guys were telling paco to take another rest and bring back the rubio (the blond, i.e. foreign, guy). but it really was heavy and i thought about it because you can’t witness all of this and not wonder if you would be up to the challenge of hefting this massive burden around the city for the many hours that the procession lasts and i realized that while i was carrying a couple of tons of gold, silver and wood; they were carrying the blessed virgin.

cut to a year later: last year. we have a friend in malaga named pedro luis gomez who is the sub-director of the main paper in malaga called, el sur (the south). last year el sur ran a small item about me with a picture
saying, chris barron, lead singer of the spin doctors, comes every year to the semana santa in malaga, he is a brother of the cofradia of the miserichordia which is the organization that puts out the procession that contains the virgin of great power, the tronno that my friend paco carries.

this wasn’t precisely accurate.

you could say that it was a bit of a stretch to say that this random dude from new york city was a member of this somewhat arcane, southern spanish church organization.

the next day paco and i went to the church and i filled out a little paperwork, made a donation and became a brother.

so that night when i met up with paco and the virgin of great power at the same spot as the year before with a "can of coke," it had gotten around, i think, that the lead singer of the spin doctors was un hermano de la cofradia de la miserichordia. i was asked once again if i wanted to take a turn carrying the blessed virgin. i did. when we put her down after a hundred yards or so i asked, otra? (again?) and they said, ok and i kept doing that until i had carried her the rest of the way. when we were done at around four-thirty in the morning everyone was hugging each other and they were hugging me too and paco was grinning and shaking his head.

this wasn’t the first time i’d seen him incline and oscillate his smiling bean at the christobalin in this manner (el christobalin is my spanish nickname). it usually means that i’ve done or gone what or where no goofball bumpkin from new york has done or gone before. in other words, i always seem, thanks to my amazing spanish friends, to be landing in some place or situation where i’m the only american for seventy two billion miles and comporting myself in a way that would satisfy any native but for a random dude from manhattan pulling off a bit of a miracle of protocol: like the time at la candella in madrid when pepe danced for the first time in five years or in the town of montanilla when, using this funky little pouring thing, i poured wine from a gigantic vat a distance of a foot or two into a tiny glass with out spilling a drop.

paco put his hand on my shoulder and said, christobal, eres un monstro.

in thirty plus years of carrying la virgen de la grand poder, he’s seen dozens of people, spanish and otherwise try to join in and carry the tronno but they have always been given what you might call the bird in no uncertain terms. in all that time he’s never seen anyone be permitted to continue more that a turn or two let alone to the end. funny, huh?

so this year i’m invited to salir (go out) with la virgen de la grand poder for the whole time. we will carry her out of the church at about nine pm and carry her in a circuitous rout throughout the city and have her home around the modest hour of three am.

it’s an honor too grand for one such as i but never the less i must endeavor to comport myself in a way befitting a gentleman, a road dog and a man of the world.

march 9, 2008

i woke up today and i had these glorious bruises.

without going into to much detail for those who have followed these norwegian chronicles yet not leaving those who are new to the adventures of chris barron in the dark; honda høvda, and eric røe (my norwegian brothers from norwegian mothers) and i found ourselves at the nachtschpeil (after party) of the century with (among illustrious others) børge ousland, the world renowned polar explorer who set us a challenge that involved pulling oneself around the back of a chair and without touching the floor, picking up a cork on the opposite side with one's teeth and pulling said self back up onto the chair. i repeat: without touching the floor. (for more detail see my blog of 3/8/08 entitled "finse")

i remember trying six or seven times but this morning when i showed him a huge, five inch wide, ten inch tall bruise the color of the flags of all nations from the inside of my left knee almost to the part of me that contains the potential for another me (if you know what i mean), another dark brown subdural contusion on the inside of my left upper arm, one on the back of each calf and one more deep purple bruise the size and shape of an almond on my lower abdomen, eric said it was more like twenty times that i tried to accomplish the børge ousland challenge.

all of this was part of an absolutely legendary day that is detailed elsewhere but suffice it to say, we also had a night to be reckoned with and as the next pale today began to send a rumor of blueness into the great banner of heaven, we found our beds and our dreams found us.

i woke the next morning to the sound of ski boots clomping down the hallway outside my room and the banging of a hall door. this happened about three times in a few minutes as skiers made their way out to the perfect and pristine conditions that lie in the demesnes and vicinities of the finse (pronounced: fin-suh) hotel (1906).

i lay in my bed a while and knowing i had some juicy stuff from the night before i figured i'd get started on typing it up and maybe catch myself a little breakfast if i was on time. i looked at the clock on my cell phone and it was ten-eighteen. eighteen minutes past breakfast. i admit i had a moment of bitterness toward the skiers who couldn't even show the basic human consideration of disturbing my repose in time for breakfast but i wasn't really that hungry anyway (it's just the principle of the thing, really) but after all, the souls of the barrons are made of stern stuff. i suffered this sling or arrow of outrageous fortune, got out of bed and parted the curtains.

outside my window, sun and snow cavorted in a riot of whiteness and light. i actually staggered back a step or two and raised my forearm across my eyes in a defensive gesture. when i regained my equilibrium (such as it was after the sort of night i'd had) the mountain was ramping the glare of the sky's fire back into the air and through a cascade of a hundred and fifty-seven icicles that curved off a gable whose roof finished at the left just outside my window and made a dazzling like sapphires and diamonds in a battle with fire and lightning and sort of framed the beyond. out further, the roofs of the houses (many of which had snow up to the second story windows) were softened by the snow that covered every plane, blunted every angle and gave off a silence that was like the music in the back of the mind of the world. the snow stretched without seams, first gently, then climbing sharply to the peaks of the mountains miles away that lay back like you could touch them with your lazily outstretched arm.

i went to the lobby, did some writing, was joined by eric and honda and after a little deliberation we decided to use the couple of hours we had left before the train to bergen for the show we were doing there that night to get in at least a little romp in the snow. we didn't have enough time to get outfitted to go skiing so we borrowed some boots from maren, of maren and eirik, the couple who are the managers of the finse hotel and looming figures in the story of the previous nights nachtschpeil revels. behind the hotel is a lake that is frozen solid and is the sight of a lot of sail skiing (people using a kind of cross between a huge kite and a parachute to pull themselves careening across the snow in skis). we walked out about a kilometer onto the flat expanse of white and stood joking and laughing in the midst of the mountains and the sky, pausing in time to take a picture and soon maren and another friend, henriette, joined us and we all stood there in the advancing grayness of an oncoming snow storm as the hills and houses were lost in the whipping, whirling, dancing snow and our laughter carried into the sky.

we got back to the hotel and caught the train for bergen.

now the gig we were to play in bergen was part of a show that is a monthly event that erik's friend tore (pronounced: toor-uh) puts on called "stage diving." it's a comedy, poetry and music review of sorts and one of the undercurrents of our norwegian odyssey was that as part of the act that night, which fell on international women's day and had a theme of women, a woman was going to sing "it's a man's world" by james brown. well, she canceled and we had been asked to do the song. nobody has more respect for james brown than i but i've never been fond of that song particularly and i kind of felt that doing it as a guy at an event whose theme was women was basically an open invitation to have old fruit thrown at us. we had talked it over and decided that the only way we should do the number was if they got us dresses to wear. tore was ecstatic at the idea and that, as you might say, was that but we were still a little skeptical; actually in some ways almost more skeptical because by donning dresses we felt that, yes, we would avert the animosity of the crowd but we wondered: would we replace its animosity for its abject ridicule? you could say we were tossed from horn to horn, caught between silla and charibdis or a rock and a hard place or something else if you could think of another thing that meant you were in between two bad alternatives.

we got to sound check and i actually fell asleep on a couch for ten minutes or so and awoke as it was time to sound check the james brown number. we had kept saying that we should listen to the song. both honda and i have it on our i-pods but we never did. i think maybe because we were nervous and sort of avoiding thinking about it so we barely knew the tune and lyrics. so i get up there and as i'm checking the mike i start singing really absurd words and the band and crew and honda and eric were all cracking up so i was like, why don't i sing dumb lyrics to the verses and then i'll step back and you two can do the choruses? (the "this is a man's world" part).

good. that's what we'd do.

meanwhile, there was a poetry part to the evening and tore asked me if i'd read something. i didn't really have anything to read but i asked if it'd be ok if i read the account of the adventures of chris, eric and honda in finse that i'd just completed on the train and honda and eric told him it was really cool and he said that'd be great.

so we go back to the hotel and i slept for half an hour, took the greatest shower of my career and we went back to the venue. i never printed up what i was going to read so i went to tore and i was like, man, i never printed up that thing and i don't really have anything to read and i really don't know if i can do the poetry thing, i'm super sorry and he was like, wow, it would be so cool if you did. is there anything you could read? and i was like, well, i could try to write something now i suppose (the whole thing was starting in like, ten minutes) and he was like, that would be fantastic and suddenly, i felt kind of inspired. how cool would it be, i thought, to come through with a really cool poem ten minutes before the show? so i went to some random part of the theater back stage with a piece of paper i'd gotten from tore and began to write and about ten minutes later i'd written the following:

mother

in the sad, soft sunset
of the very first day
the mother of the world
stretches forth her hand
and all of the sweet and fragile gifts
withheld until the end of creation
fly forth into the bewildered blue

and the shadow of her arm,
and the shining of her brow,
and the birth of her smile,
they fly forth
to fill the end of time with blooming
to give a hope to every dawn
and to let the sky and the sun
and the voices of the trees
and the bones of the wind

all know

that behind the forlorn and hopeless stones
that make the wall of things as they are
bleeds the sweet and beating heart
of what might be

so i go to tore and tell him i have something to read and he was psyched and i read it to eric and honda and they were impressed and i felt good because it feels good to 1) write a poem and 2) come through in the clutch.

the show started and as i said, it's a review of all kinds of comedy, poetry and music. eric, honda and i go on about an hour into it and we played three songs. this song we wrote called "invisible man" and one of theirs called "all the same" and one of mine you might have heard called "little miss can't be wrong." then there's a little while while some other stuff goes on and then i read the poem i'd written ten minutes before the show (to applause and universal satisfaction) and then some more stuff and the time came for us to put our dresses on.

honda's was pink with thin little straps and these little feathery poufs all over it. it seemed like it was designed for a man to wear in drag because it had these sort of built in boobs built into the chest. the bottom kind of poofed out and the over all effect was pretty gruesome. eric had this lavender number that looked like a prom dress for an eighties viking and mine was this green sort of bride's maid monstrosity that should probably have been burned long before i could get my limbs in it.

we were dancing around like men in these dresses back stage because the funk band was playing a little set before we went on and they were funky. they of course were wearing dresses too. so we're dancing around and laughing at each other because we look so weird. anyway, we were about to go on and we're talking about how to play this thing and i say, we shouldn't clown around at all. we shouldn't even smile. the dresses are funny enough. we should act like we think we look cool. i'm like, i'll sing the verses totally seriously and you guys back me up like i'm saying the most profound stuff in the world. they were like, yeah, and we went on and sang these lyrics (to the tune of james brown's "this is a man's world."

man's world

man invented hors d'oeuvres
man invented chairs
man invented shampoo
to clean his nappy hair

chorus:
this is a man's world
but it wouldn't mean nothing
without a woman or a girl

man invented cheese
man invented cows
man invented other shit
i can't remember right now
chorus

man invented stuff
so he could spend his wealth
man invented women
so he wouldn't have to have sex with himself
chorus

man invented phones
so he could make phone calls
man invented other men
so he could discuss foot ball
chorus

when we came out in the dresses of course, the reaction from the crowd was immediate. laughter. not derisive laughter but just good natured, crowd laughing at dudes they'd seen doing other stuff on stage, now on stage in dresses kind of laughter. so far so good i suppose. then we started to do the number and the lines just scored one after the other and it ended up being one of the funniest numbers of which any one of us had been a part. it was video taped so we're going to get it on youtube and it'll get a million hits and we'll all be rich and everyone we know will be rich too.

i'm sure that the differential between how bad i though that number was going to suck and how great it turned out is the largest of any number i've ever done.

the next morning we woke, got in the ohm shanti mobile, erik and his fiancé, camilla's audi and we lit out for stavanger, where erik and honda live. we took it easy on norway's highway 39, the road from bergen to stavanger marveling that the week had gone by so quickly and making plans for our next norwegian campaign. norway rolled by, covered in little rocky hillocks covered in elm trees and alder. rounding corners and mounting rises to have revealed to us fjords (the great norwegian ocean inlets sided by mountains) with boats and light houses, tiny bays with boathouses and rocky coasts with small farms, we talked and talked until the road found their homes and i was getting out of the car to hug honda goodbye and then i was at erik's house with camilla and his sweet kids where i was spending the night. and then i was drinking red, italian wine in their home and eating curry that camilla made and staying up till late talking and talking and talking and then saying, oh my god, look at the time and sleeping a little and it being time to leave and looking forward to being home but tearing my heart a little on the thorn of leaving because you can't be everywhere. you can barely be anywhere when you consider all of the places there are in this universe and you can only be in one of them at a time. if you're lucky and the world is full of far flung people who love you, the places they are are considerably fewer than all the places in the universe but it's still a lot more than the one place at a time to which pythagoras and newton and einstein insist on limiting even the boldest adventurer. so you walk through doors and for every door you walk through, you don't walk through every single other door there is. sometimes you get the chance to walk through those unwalked through doors again but it's not the same walk or the same through because it's a different time and that makes it a different place, doesn't it?

so with a devil on my shoulder and a dollar in my hand i left the sweet land of norway. i left my friends. i left our songs hanging in the sweet, clear air. i left her fjords, i left her snow, i left her aquavit and beer. i left into her bluegray sky and on into the west with the sun behind.

march 8th, 2008

when i woke up this morning the light of the blazing sun was tearing it's way out of heaven and striking the snow blind like long lightning on a white anvil but when i woke up long ago in a time called yesterday, stavanger was clothed in grey and rain. honda høvda and eric røe picked me up at the hotel where i'd eaten muesli, toast and herring, ham and cheese and we took eric and his fiancé camilla's audi (the ohm shanti mobile) north to the ferry across a fjord and on up through tunnels and on more ferries to the city of bergen. three fathers, three musicians, three friends laughing our guts out at road stories and anecdotes about our mutual friends and people we've known, telling jokes, coming up with ridiculous stage names and names of websites that were absurd. i think i almost spat out what i was drinking about five times and had to walk away or cover my mouth to keep from spraying my friends. later at the gig i'd say that i had laughed about a year's worth of laughter that day. eric's comment was that we could all be serious for the rest of the year.

when we got to bergen we took the train for finse. finse is pronounced: fin-suh with the stress on the first syllable and the first syllable having a higher pitch than the second. it's in the mountains between oslo and bergen. there are no roads there. you can only get there by train so we got on the train and there's this whole culture in bergen of getting on the train on friday and holidays and going to the mountains to ski. so we're on the train but we're not skiers or from bergen (well, eric is but he lives in stavanger now), we're musicians on our way to a gig so we're different and we're laughing non-stop. the train is really cool. you have babies and dogs and people of all ages eating sandwiches and they're laughing too (but not nearly as much as we are and probably not at anything nearly as asinine). well, at first we're rolling along next to what i think was a fjord, among hills and rocks but soon that gave way to mountain crags towering over green rivers with odd little houses and boats. the train took us through tunnels that roared, muffled by the windows and made your ears pop, stealing the brightness from the pale mountaintops and plunging the car suddenly into flickering fluorescence. eric told me that the walk from the train to the hotel was two kilometers but not to worry the snow was only up to here (he held his hand palm down up to his hip) and then we said that the distance to the hotel was only half a meter but the snow was two kilometers deep.

i slept a little as eric went off to talk to an old friend he'd seen on the train and honda nodded off and when i woke up the world was covered in snow and the sky and the earth were the same misty pitch of paleness so that you couldn't see where the world ended and the heavens began and as my eyes adjusted to wakefulness, the black rock of the bare patches looked as though they were floating in nothing and the mountain was sky and the sky was mountain.

we got to fince, crossed the platform, and walked into what i thought was the train station and erik asked me if i wanted to sound check and then check in and i asked where we were playing and he pointed down a half flight of stairs at a set of double doors and i looked around and i realized it looked like a rustic hotel lobby and i asked, is this the hotel and it was. it turns out the finse hotel (1906) used to be the train station. finse has been for over a century a place where polar expeditionaries hung out and trained and i guess, vacationed. the room where we were to play is a sort of living room with antique skis and an ancient sled hanging on the walls. there was also a mounted reindeer head that is now our manager (so please feel free to direct enquiries about work to the reindeer head in the lower lounge of the finse hotel, norway). the basement is a disco called boogi'n, which is a norwegisization of "boogying," i think. the dance floor is built on the site of a bomb crater from a piece of ordinance that the british dropped on the hotel in world war two. apparently, the nazis were using the building as a headquarters for an airstrip they were attempting to make in the mountains (the idea being to use the altitude of the mountains to save fuel). by the old, black oak bar are train compartments from the thirties where you could sit and hang out for a more intimate gathering.

later on, the gig turned out to be one of the most fun i've ever done. honda, eric and i, without a real set list, took turns playing songs and telling stories, continuing to laugh our asses off. we'd hit a point where pretty much anything we said was funny to us and the crowd caught the esprit and it turned into an intimate and unforgettable evening. we played for two and a half hours and got a very enthusiastic double encore and a standing ovation.

after the gig, a guy named eirik, who is one of the managers of the hotel, told us that this really famous polar explorer was at the gig and was drinking in the disco downstairs and that we should really meet him. so i was like, yeah, that's super cool. maybe i'll meet this guy and have one more beer. eirik was like, one more beer?

it turned out to be considerably more than one.

well, we go down stairs and we meet børge ousland. google this guy. i haven't been able to because i've been on the side of a mountain in norway actually doing all the stuff i'm writing about but it turns out that he crossed antarctica on cross-country skis, he's been to the north pole like eighty seven times, basically, if there's a nutty thing worth doing somewhere really cold, he's done it. so i asked him if i could ask him some dumb questions and i did. one thing i read in a book called "the top of the world" (i don't remember who wrote it) was about this inuit guy who killed a seal and while it froze, he made it into a sled. so i asked him if that was possible and he said, sure. he kind of looked up into his eyelids for a moment and then he said, i could do that.

you really got the feeling that he could.

we all hung out rapping about this and that and it turns out that finse has six residents. like, six people whose permanent address is finse and two of them are eirik and maren who are a couple and are the managers of the hotel. i ended up talking to the owner whose name is thorleif. he was like, call me thor.

right on.

the night wore on and the bar was closing and thor invited us to his house. so honda, erik, eirik, maren børge and another friend named cille and i all went to his house. we get there and we're drinking wine and i sit down and talk to børge some more and he tells me he had to shoot a polar bear one time because it was going to eat him. he ate it.

after a while eirik takes out a swiffer, broom kind of thing and takes this funky green, blue and orange icelandic hat (the pointy kind with the earflaps like i wore i the two princes video) and puts it on the end of the broom handle. now i'm standing by the kitchen table and he's cleared out the living room of furniture and he tells me, now you are going to have to represent the united states. so i'm like, ok, and i'm thinking, what's new? so thor starts doing one of those russian dances and he's kind of looking at the hat on the end of the broom and posturing and stuff and i realize as eirik is bobbing the hat up and down that it's a game and a demonstration of masculinity and a form of self expression where you have to kick the hat off the broomstick. it's a very old norwegian tradition called hallingkast. honda takes a turn and it's very funny. he pretends that an invisible force is pulling him away from the hat and he does handstands and falls on his side and misses a couple of times and generally makes a clown of himself. then it's my turn. i did a couple of flamenco moves and without much ado i do a sort of handspring and go ass over tea kettle and land in a heap. i didn't hurt myself. to badly. i stand up and everybody is laughing and clapping and i ask, did i get it? and eirik shows me the broom stick and there's no hat so i guess the honor of the united states is in tact.

you're welcome.

so next we're eating some eggs (and continuing to drink wine) and there's one of those steel beams over the table that looks like a capital "i" when you look at a cross section. børge (the awesome arctic explorer dude) climbs like spider man over the table with his finger tips and toes in the grooves of the beam and then reaches down and picks up a glass of wine and takes a sip upside down. then he comes down from the ceiling and grabs a chair and a cork. (how the hell am i going to explain this?)

ok.

he does this as he explains. as you're facing the chair he places the cork standing up about three inches from the back left leg of the chair. then (he says and does) you have to get your body around from the right of the front of the chair to the back, around the back and down so that you can pick up the cork in your teeth. then with the cork in your teeth you have to get back around from the back of the chair, holding on to the legs and the underside of the seat, so that you're back in the front of the chair again. without touching the floor. he actually does this. i'm not sure if i'm explaining it very well but suffice it to say it's difficult. you have to keep your body suspended above the floor with just the seat to hold you up while you pull yourself around the back of the chair. honda tried it and the chair fell over. eric actually did it. i made my attempt and i have to say that by this point i'm so enthusiastic that i've stripped down to my t-shirt and long underwear (i would remain thusly clad for the rest of the evening). i made my attempt and i got around back of the chair and got the cork in my teeth but i couldn't get myself back around to the front of the chair. it was considered a valiant effort. i came pretty close.

i actually went on to try several more times each time managing to get the cork in my teeth but i never got back to the front of the chair. eventually børge gave me a clap on the shoulder as if to say, good job, my son, we can't all be famous arctic explorers. god disperses his gifts to all with his own design. one he makes an arctic explorer, one he makes a rock star. go forth and be content.

at this point, honda offhandedly brings up that he is undefeated in party wrestling and issues a challenge to eirik, the biggest dude at the party. eirik is five or six inches taller and possibly forty pounds heavier than honda. the epic struggle that ensued could be considered on a par with any great struggle of history. david and goliath? the battle of finse was right up there. the english at agincourt? the george foreman vs. muhamad ali? the three hundred spartains that held the pass at thermopoli against the persian thousands? the battle royal at finse between honda and eirik stands up to all of these. it could have gone either way there for a second or two but honda got a hand behind big eirik's knee and with a mighty heave, threw him to the floor and with an amount of skill and elan that was surprising for one of his advanced stage of, shall we say, celebratory disengagement, pinned him to his back keeping his perfect record and the honor of the clan høvda in tact.

as even the most casual peruser of these chronicles can observe, this night was a veritable cornicopia of amusments, uplifting frivolity and educational opportunities.

honda then sat down at the piano admirably playing the part of a human juke box. playing all and sundry tunes that we could think of as eric and i sang in harmony all the words that we could remember.

we went outside to go back to the hotel and the sky was the mysterious, deep blue of a day that is not yet sure it has decide to be. in front of thor's house was a bank of snow about thirty feet high. we mounted this and stood on top in the predawn indigo like hairs on the white head of the ancient world. the stars were like fat pebbles in the endlessness that is all around us all the time but hides behind schedules and routines until you climb a huge snow bank on the forehead of the world and look into forever's shining eyes.

we galumphed back to the hotel through the knee deep snow, i in my sneakers and jeans. one common thread of the whole finse adventure for me being my complete lack of appropriate attire and luggage. on the way, eirik suggested we go to his house for a night cap. it was now twenty two hours after i'd awoken to one of the finest days in the history of mankind and i said, "at this point we're not adding to today. we're only subtracting from tomorrow." (i gotta use that one again some time, huh?)

eric and i went back to the hotel, pausing of course to adorn the fresh blanket of fallen, gossamer, perfect snow with a pair of snow angels.

we were met in the lobby by the night shift girl who took us into the kitchen and gave us bread from the oven and butter and norwegian brown goat cheese and apple juice to a sound track of tom waits. we lingered over the bread, talking about the show, not wanting the day to end but at last we went our ways, me up some stairs, he down and trudged off into what was now today and our dreams.