Summer is a time for merry, at least that’s what others have seemed to decide, I can be merry in most situations.
But that means every single week is marked with events and things to do. I find that no matter how many events I opt out of, there are always more to join, some more fun then others and I do not want to overdo it so I have to be strategic about how I spend my time.
A bi-yearly candle festival in my old neighborhood Shimokitazawa is a time where all my old friends from when I first lived in Japan from 2008-2012 get together. It’s just like a family reuinion.
People make candles and candle artists from around the country promote their work by holding exhibitions around town. Live music and food and all that, and most importantly lots of good people.
This year they asked me to perform some ambient guitar sounds while they lit all the candles and so for the first time ever, I jammed on stage.
Jamming is a whole lot more challenging than playing a song you’ve practiced and I’ve always felt comfortable doing it at home where I can make a thousand mistakes. Technically there are no mistakes but when playing a scale, it sounds really jarring if you hit a note that is not inside thhe scale, unless you do it strategically.
But as I came to realize thanks to Victor Wooten in his book “The Music Lesson”, a few fantastic book for anyone who wants to jam in music or jam in life, whenever you hit the wrong note, just shift over to the next position and you’ve hit the right note. If you aren’t awkward about it, no one will even notice.
The reason this was kind of EXTRA HARD mode is that I was playing solo. Anyone who has jammed before knows how much more diffiuclt this is. When there are two people, you have a chance to collect your thoughts and plan your next move but when you are solo, everyone can hear everything and you have to keep the rhythm yourself. Even if there is no set rhythm, you build a pace and to suddenly lose it means losing all the momentum of the emotion you’ve built up.
But it was fun! The only issue was that they were supposed to spend half of that time making announcements and they only spent 5 of the 40 minutes doing that, plus I was in the center of the stage so I imagine some people thought of it as a performance while I was really just providing a BGM, and it set up a kind of weird expectation.
One person stopped me to tell me she loved it afterward and said she does live paintings at raves, kind of psychedelic but playful and innocent. She would work perfectly as a cover artist for one of my books and I’d also love to jam while she does a live painting. Very very good energy too!
That was Saturday, now on to Sunday!
A monthly flea market near my house is the main opportunity my partner has to sell the yarn hats and accessories she makes. Never mind that it’s summer and for some reason she barely made any summer hats, its a fun chance for us to meet people in our neighborhood from outside our circle, or at the other end of our circle.
I put out my books and bags as I sometimes do when she joins these events. Nobody has bought them (partly because the production cost forces me to sell them for a high price), but it usually starts a conversation with someone and this was no exception. I brought my guitarlele and jammed and a friend came to paint on his ipad next to me.
The weekend ended when I got home and found a new friend sitting there in my living room:
A friend from China who has been living here is trying to graduate to digital nomadism and heading home first before going to Europe. She needed someone to take care of this little creature and I guess we said yes, so now we have a little pet friend.
It comes as an interesting time, where I’ve been having these synchronicities around dragons, this thing to me is a little pokemon tadpole dragon.
I feel good things coming my way, and I feel allies all around me. Feeling excited about summer!
Newest podcast snd livestream also up:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Z2CkEqiZMOzqCob6vVaSE?si=7rOKaytFQmeEywF-DLzVVQ
https://www.youtube.com/live/YmstR3qN0kg?feature=share
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