jimbino vegan

artwork from colombia 2011 december

2011-12-21T08:24:00.000-08:00

my friend tessa schneider who i met in bogota and hung out with for a few days

here she is sitting in a cafe drinking local coffee

marriacchi band i saw in a bookshop for some book festival... the singer blew my mind..

devon july 2011

2011-07-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

View from the terrace walk opposite andy williamsons home looking west i think on a beautiful july morning in 2011!

tahiti

2011-03-11T17:28:00.001-08:00

dear friends
i hope you are all well. I am having a great time in Tahiti. we woke up even earlier than usual this morning for the tsunami alert.. it is a wonderful place... everyone wakes very early.. around 6 am and i get so much stuff done my midday it is amazing! I really like that... anyhow today we woke at 5ish and at 7am we all walked up the hill and chilled in the early morning sunshine. There was a loud siron then tom and i played music for the families there and I sketched and jammed with some teenagers... it was pleasant but no wave appeared at ALL not even the slightest sign of one... as if man could predict natural disasters!... we were all hoping that the homes near the beach would get one good splash but we were dissappointed... i had even brought my water colours up the hill so they would not get ruined! I had a great time doing a little art class with the children on the hill drawing with half a dozen kids and joking and laughing. There were three siblings... twins called Heimata and Heiarii and their older sister Heiura... which means in Tahitian Crown of Eyes, Crown of the king and Red Crown respectively. Such nice kids!
So everyone gave up and came home around 10ish and I slept for an hour or so then had breadfruit and salad for lunch and am now just relaxing at midday... this is really like paradise this place.. such abundance of everything... yesterday we went surfing in the morning on small waves but big enough for me... I caught one cracker for a good 10 seconds standing on a shelf of surf rushing headlong toward the coconut trees on the beach in a brilliant burst of energy and ending with a fantastic flop... at my level of surfing the most important part of the show including lots of noise... most other surfers are silent but i like to yell and shout about the waves... noone can really hear me... some of the tahitan kids make woooo sounds when they zip along on their boogie boards but i am the only adult who jumps up and down and tries to do backflips off the board... strange that!
after a relaxed picnic by the old french lighthouse we drove to the valley in the centre of the island and walked along a very undulating track past dozens of huge waterfalls and huge rearing peaks of wonderful exotic beauty. Wow we were pretty puffed when, after a swim in the river, we returned hback to the car and it started pouring down in buckets. On the drive home we stopped to watch a large traditional dance group practice for the big show tonight and then popped into a restaurant by the marina where two guitarists went zonky on their instruments playing very fast modern intellectual cheese sound... it was not so bad actually ... some really sad songs which tom and i improvised slow football chants to which was hilarious. still i thought their talents were wasted on guitars... they could both go much further if they consolidated their natural genius for air guitar.
so tonight we have a big show to watch... i have been sketching and drawing about 3 pictures a day which i am pleased about and also playing a bit of music just to amuse myself between times which has been a nice break from the art! Between Lucine... the lovely french girl who used to live with cecile in Nice and is now studying here... and sophie my old friend from Lille... we are being looked after like kings. wonderful relaxing time after quite a incessant two weeks bumming around in NZ... i am really impressed by the ukulele players... they only play a few chords albeit with very clever phrasing but the rhythms are what really get me... they even propel the ukuleles by the left hand on the neck against the right strumming hand to get the really fast rhythms ... so beautiful.. and lovely soft singing!
I have been inspired by Polynesian culture to try to invent some dance songs... songs with dances for them that you can do at the same time. I also liked the Haka in NZ... they had quite a violent culture but the Haka is both a war dance and a greeting and the idea of doing a DONT MESS WITH ME DUDE dance as a beautiful cultural exhibition and lovely singing followed by warm hospitality appeals to me somehow. I may try to write something like that in English... even when the Maori soldiers stepped off the ships back onto New Zealand soil after the desert war in North Africa in WWII where they faught as crack night time attack troops they were greeted by a stripped maori warrior dancing with little steps like a librarian with red hot coals in his slippers and waving a spear at them on the dock. He slowly retreated as he danced and yelled or sang infront of them as they shambled forwards with lowered heads. I only saw one rugby game in NZ which was a girls team ... I am seriously telling you I think I would have been flattened by these teenage girls and even Louis would have found them more than a handfull if he could get over the idea that they were girls... cracking pace and they knew how to collide with certainty.
Unlike i had previously expected Tahiti is really not very touristy at all although i have only spent a few hours in the main city Papeete... and i was playing music in the park and getting my ass whipped by a huge jabber the hut local look a like who lay Roman style on a bench with his belly reaching for the floor and beat me with really classy unauthodox openings and deadly finish boomerang style from behind my classical gormless barrage of pawns. It seemed the less fat you are here the worse you are at chess. I managed to beat the skinny lad but the second in command who looked like he could crush a deck chair but would loose to Jabba in a bench battle, well he beat me pretty neatly too. SO i am putting on weight and going back to the park soon for a rematch. The Tahitians are generally a little smaller in height than the Maoris in NZ but equally stocky and hold their traditions stronger. the french dont distroy the romance and beauty of Pacific islands as well as the Anglo Saxons it seems... they allow the wonderful chaos to continue and maybe even add a bit to the elegance and beauty of the local customs whereas the british only really seemed to admire the Maoris for their quality as chunky ruggerbuggers or soldiers for the empire, i hope i am not correct. everyone we meet here asks why we are staying for such a short time in tahiti ... no one asked that in NZ and here is certainly a place i could stay for a good while.
anyhow this time next week we head for LA to meet kester then i go to San Francisco to see some old friends like joe and stanford and then to New Orleans which is going to be great fun for April... back to London in early May via Iceland seems the most interesting way. should get some great painting done there.
Tom flies out of LA to london after 3 days... he is out of money and we both miss home a bit actually.
if you have any recommendations of places i should go or people to meet in USA please tell me
xxxx
lots and lots of love
jimmy
xxxxxxx

exhibition of paintings before leaving OZ... all originals for sale!

2011-02-22T04:12:00.000-08:00

uluru at sunset

hermansberg mission northern territories

chantal at sun set

sydney bridge

the hilly billy hoot adelaide

second valley countryside

matti in hermansberg nthn territories

the olgas

steven mitchell talks

above: port adelaide

michael and tony the dead aboriginal on the coorong

margaret river view by the old railway

MELBOURNE TRIP November 2010

2010-12-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

A train crossing on Charles Street near Merri train station in Northcote on a November evening>

Stylish young ladies in Melbourne using hanging out in a cafe working on a computer

INGLE FARM MURALS

2010-12-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

Me at my vernissage public viewing of my artwork at ingle farm primary school, Adelaide.

After 8 weeks of part-time painting and workshops with the children of ingle farm primary school I have finally finished the term and it has been a lot of fun, quite exhausting and a wonderfully educative experience for me and hopefully for the kids too!
I painted 6 seperate panals which replaced the holes left by the old airconditioning units ... each one was about the size of a door and stood at knee hight. I painted 4 on aboriginal themes inspired by two aboriginal stories and the other two panels were based on a Russian fairy tale and an Indian epic. My thanks to all involved especially the Rita Martucci who made it all possible by inviting me and accomodating me and driving me to school and the kids who helped me with ideas, painting, re-enacting the stories and entertaining me! I am looking forward to doing more projects like this in the future!

'By the Pikes Wish', a fantastic Russian fairy tale about a lazy bones who catches a magic pike who grants him is every wish if he spares his life. He does so and then proceeds to magic everything he needs - chopped wood, water, automatic sleigh.... Eventually the Tsar hears about it and invites him to the palace where he drives sitting on his warm oven with the official messenger petrified by his side. He falls in love with the princess and magics her in love with him. The Tsar cant stand the idea of his daughter marrying a lazy villager so he kidnaps them both and puts them in a barrel and drops them in the sea but he magics them out of that mess and they become Tsar and Tsarina in the end and live very very very happily and he even magics himself to being more handsome and cultivated at his wife's request! No worries mate!

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RAMAYANA story

Above: sita in the jungle

Ravana on the rampage with Hanuman jumping in from Top Right stage and Rama

shooting his golden arrow as Sita is snatched in the foreground.

Finished mural!

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Me skipping during recess with some of the kids posing. There are many 'new arrivals', recent immigrants to australia from over 25 countries. Many from Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, China and Korea and some SE Asian countries and they are helped intergrate into the Australian culture with native speaking helpers! Here a Sudanese girl and a girl from Congo are hugging a Russian girl as I borrow their skipping rope!

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Kangeroo and Wombat story I

Below: me and one of the nice kids from Congo who was so helpful

and would get angry if i did not let him help me in any way!

THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE.. LOTS OF LOVE

JIMBINO VEGAN

(aka Mr Gee)

classical music festival in Dorset... sept 2010

2010-11-13T03:40:00.000-08:00

Miss Terburg playing at classical festival in Dorset

Some chick playing guitar at the festival

A dude playing guitar at the festival

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND WINTER SOLSTICE EVERYONE!

2010-11-07T04:18:00.000-08:00

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE EVERYONE! MISS YOU ALL AND HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ABORIGINAL MYTHS AT INGLE FARM PRIMARY SCHOOL no 2 HOW KANGAROO GOT HIS TAIL

2010-11-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

HOW THE KANGEROO GOT HIS TAIL

The story of how it got its name is uniquely Australian. When some of the first whitefellas saw this unusual animal hopping about they asked the Aborigines what it was called. The Aborigines replied 'kanguru', which in their language meant "I don't know". Sometime later, the whitefellas discovered what kangaru really meant and then concluded that the Aborigines must have misunderstood the question asked of them. Of course, it is just as probable that the Aborigines understood the question but thought it would be a funny joke if the ignorant Europeans walked about saying "I don't know". *

* A similar communication breakdown/joke led to the naming of Melbourne's moomba festival. Aborigines told organisers that moomba means: "lets get together and have fun." In reality, it means "bum."

Above: Almost finished picture of Kangaroo and Wombat in the storm and in the summer

The first completed mural of Kangeroo and Wombat getting violent,
including a close up below of the upper part of the painting!

Sketches for the Kangaroo and Wombat mural

I told the children the Kangaroo and Wombat stories and they started sketching them with lots of great and inspiring results
Wombat asleep in his warm house by Noemi

Above: Jack's work

Above: ??? work

Above: Maria Hose from Columbia's picture. I loved her birds and
asked her to do the four corner birds in the finished mural.

Fatimah from Afghanisthan. A lovely little girl with little English but great
drawing talent. She did a fantastic job painting all the flowers in the final mural!

Above: My sketches for Wombat asleep in his cosy home and outside with Kangeroo

Abufazr from Afghanistans sketch of Roo and Wombat. He helped me paint the
flowers in the finished painting and was great help and and company!

Malaysia Kuala Lumpur for 3 days

2010-10-27T20:18:00.001-07:00

Malaysian school girls at the bus stop

Dude eating in Kuala Lumpur, below is the photo of the same restaurant

sketches in Adelaide

2010-10-27T19:52:00.002-07:00

Trees in the Botanical gardens in Adelaide

Drawings with colouring pencils in Belair national part not far from Adelaide

ABORIGINAL MYTHS AT INGLE FARM PRIMARY SCHOOL: NO. 1, WHY THE MOON WAXES AND WANES

2010-10-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

I have been working with Aboriginal myths in Ingle Farm primary school in Adelaide. Together with the children we have been illustrating a selection of Aboriginal stories. I have been retelling the stories with acompanyment on the guitaralele and then everyone draws scenes from the stories. The aim is to take parts from all the pictures and work them into several murals around the school based on each story. This first story is rewritten by me with my illustrations.

I hope you enjoy it!

HOW THE MOON WAXES AND WANES

(Based on an Aboriginal myth)

The moon was a jolly round fellow with a spotty face and a big grin called Bahloo. He was a big show-off and loved shining down every night to ogle at the girls as they danced round the fire. Although he was not really allowed he would often come down to earth and try to chase the ladies but he was so bright and impossible to miss and his body was so round and his legs so small and spindly that the young healthy women had no problems running away from him and would even tease him and laugh as he fell over and huffed and puffed trying to catch them. This turned him from being a playful clown into a cunning lech. He decided that since none of the girls seemed to want to come and keep him company on his nightly rounds across the great sky he would have to catch one and take her back by force if he had to.

One night he crept through a forest in a valley so no-one would see his light and he heard two girls voices in the trees nearby. He walked closer and said in his most friendly and gentle voice:

“Good evening ladies, I hope you are enjoying this lovely evening! Oh what a beauuuutiful night, don’t you think?”

Now the girls immediately recognised him but they were surprised by his sudden appearance and even more surprised by his exquisitely polite manners so although they were a little anxious they replied to his questions and started chatting with him. They were sitting on their canoes by the river and were ready at any moment to push off and escape into the deep water if he tried anything and both the girls were actually very curious to speak to the moon himself. He had seen so many wonderful things they could only dream of! True, he did have a lot of very unattractive scars on his face and he was very funny to look at but everything around looked so beautiful in his light and these two girls prided themselves on being much more daring than any of the others.

Well of course, before too long Bahloo made a clumsy attempt to snatch one of the girls while pretending to read her palm and the two quickly pushed their canoes out into the water and prepared to go home but the moon felt particularly lonely that night and falling to the ground by the shore he started crying and begged the girls to come back:

“Oh, why doesn’t anyone understand how much I would love to have just one little wife to keep me company as I go around the skies every night lighting up the world for all the people below to enjoy! I get little thanks and I know I should not have tried to catch you but I have suffered so much from the other girls teasing me I thought it was the only way! Sob… sob… I promise I won’t touch you again if you just come back to chat with me! Please… sob… PLEEEASE!”

Something in his pathetic voice touched the girls tender hearts and also for want of anything else exciting to do that evening they decided to go back and give him one more chance but before they returned they agreed that they would teach him a good strong lesson if he broke his promise.

He was very grateful that they came back to chat to him and they talked deep into the night. He told them all about the beautiful planets and stars, how the earth looked from his silver throne and the fantastic lights of dawns and sunsets. He did not know it but often for an unattractive but humorous and charming guy like himself women would just need a lot of time. They wait until you have exhausted yourself emotionally after days and days of polite flattery, love poems, presents and respectful admiration and at that very moment when you have given up ALL hope and decide you have been offering your heart to them only to be carelessly scratched and gingerly prodded, they suddenly feel an irresistible desire to throw their lot in with you, as if you gain their trust by showing how much you will harm yourself for their sakes. None of them would have admitted it but history shows that there could have been a good chance that one or even both of these adventurous girls would have agreed to shack up with him if he had only had the patience and wisdom to play his cards right and play their game. Anyhow, he was by no means patient enough for that and in fact had far better things to do. So while he was winning their hearts the long winded-way he was still looking for a chance to catch at least one of them by stealth.

“What lovely canoes you have, I would so love to ride in a canoe!”

‘We will give you a ride!’

“My little button, that is so kind of you but I have never learnt how to paddle! One of you will have to row for me!”

The girls were still being careful but it was more out of fear that their combined weight with his substantial waste-line would sink the boat that they decided to just tow him across around the river swimming by the side of the boat while he sat alone inside. So they pushed off and Bahloo chortled and sang for joy as they floated down the river! He really was having the most wonderful fun he could remember in years and years! The water was rushed around him with a beautiful whisper as the trees floated past and far above the stars twinkled. His lovely silver light danced on the river and on the dark long wet hair and lovely shoulders of the two healthy young girls who were towing him. He had never been so close to a woman in his life and it was all too much! He could not contain himself and started to tickle them and stroke their hair. One girl warned him:

“If you touch me again dumpling-head and I will scream and all the hunters in the tribe will come and throw their spears at you before you have time to wink!”

Bahloo laughed and said: ‘He he he, nonsense my little fishy, we are way too far from the camp now, just try and scream!’ and he made a grab to catch her and pull her up to the sky but the girls were too quick. Before he knew it they had upturned the canoe and with a gigantic splash he was in the cold wet river!

Above and Below: Gradual progress on the first Moon mural. Above is Roy the schools volunteer handyman who is a really kind local who comes and chats once in a while.
Below are some of the kids in the younger classes of the school

The girls looked as he struggled under the white surface and slowly the white light became more and more and more dim until all that could be seen was a tiny faint glimmering like a small coin deep down on the riverbed. The girls suddenly realised how dark everything was around them… they were not the only ones. Everywhere birds were squawking and animals were rushing about in a blind frenzy, kangaroos jumping into trees and knocking the koalas out of the branches who then walked into the river in the dark and scared the fish who jumped and tried to swim across the land in their terror! It was utter pandemonium!

After much hunting the girls managed to find the camp where the elders had made a giant fire and were calling to everyone to come together. They were the last in the tribe to return from the pitch black night and everyone listened amazed when they told their story about the moon and how he had broken his promise and then drowned in the river. Some people thought it served Bahloo right for annoying the girls and things would be safer in the future but others wondered who would be brave enough to step out of the fire light after sunset now there was no moon to help them see danger in the dark!

Initial picture for 2nd work on why the moon waxes and wanes with BELOW, Jacks sketch of the worried tribe wondering what has happened to the moon with lots of exciting boobs!

Suddenly a voice spoke from the darkness above their heads. Everyone jumped. The voice said: “Things may be better and they may be worse, but for sure they will never be as they were!”

It was the voice of Wahn, the wise crow who had been burnt black by smoke a long time ago. He had been sitting on a branch close to the camp fire and heard the girls story.

“The moon is not drowned at all!”

The men and women looked into the water and suddenly one called out! “Yes, I see him, he is there, just sitting sadly at the bottom of the river!”

Wahn the crow replied:
”That is not him, that is just his reflection, look up in the sky and you will see him, hiding his face for shame. His pride has been sorely hurt because two girls threw him into the water! He will hide his face for a few days but soon he will forget his shame and become more saucy again and try to catch the girls once more. Once again he will feel shame and start to hide his face and the same cycle will repeat and repeat until the end of time!”

And of course, Wahn was quite right!

NAVRATI Hindi festival in Adalaide Ocotber 15 2010

2010-10-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

I went to a really beautiful Hindi festival this evening with Marko called Naavrati. I was late and he left to meet Tiiu just as I arrived so I hung out there on my own watching them dance. Everyone was dressed so nicely, so many colours and they all looked so beautiful! I really wanted to dance but I also did not want to disturb them ... I think it would have been OK but I wanted someone to show me the basics. I asked a few people but they said they did not know so I gave up by bollywood carreer and started drawing all the beautiful dresses and men's robes. I gave away the pictures because they made the sitters happy but I took photos of my artwork.

The temple in the middle of the hall

Above the photo of the family and below my sketch of the same people

A lady who asked me to draw her. She is apparently also an artist.
In her raised right hand she is carrying two percussion sticks used for a dance.

Happy dancing dudes

Above, a girl resting

Standing figures

Sitting girl with percussion sticks

australia IV first day of school

2010-10-12T00:07:00.001-07:00

After one week in Adelaide I started my job helping as an artist in residence in Ingle Farm school a primary school about 20km North of the city. I was a bit nervous about what it would be like but on arrival I found everything so hectic with all the teachers rushing about confused about what was happening on the first day of school that I was immediately put at ease. No-one really seemed to know what was going on and the classes went just as smoothly as normal. Kids turn up and sit down and maybe work or mess around but still, that was quite remarkable! To me it was a lesson in conventions, when people are told what to do enough they just do it even if reluctantly! Scary but handy! I helped out in Rita's classes because I cannot be with the kids on my own because I might rape them all, which suits me because I don't have to take any of the responsibility. When Rita was telling the kids off I would sometimes find it hard not to giggle at their cheeky comments and had to cover my face a couple of times but it worked out fine, I apologized to her and she said it was fine. As a teacher I think you get used to being firm and acting angry without actually feeling vicious.

We had four classes today. The school specializes in helping recent immigrant kids and some dyslexic children too so there is a large mixture of ethnic backgrounds and some very original young cats. There are several immigrants from Afghanistan, some Iraqis, Sudanese, Rwandans and Liberians, a couple of Koreans and Chinese and Indian kids too. All in all we numbered around 20 nationalities which was exciting. In the class of six year olds, Benjamin from Liberia came in late and started chatting loudly in French in a very polite and kind way. He could not concentrate on the drawing at all but just joked and laughed and showed how he liked to dance. He was a natural show off in the nicest sense. He made me laugh a lot and feel good. He told me about how he would dance with his granny and she would give him apples. I mentioned that they could draw animals too and he said he heard a story about a white guy who went to see a lion in the zoo and the lion eat him and then put his paws together and prayed saying: "Thank you Lord for this lovely meal!" Then he added, "Actually I just made it up!" A few minutes after Benjamin was late a skinny little Sudanese boy stepped in and walked straight to the empty desk saying loudly: "Dont talk to me, I am very sad!" then sat down ignoring everyone. What an entry for the first day of term! I got him some paper and pencil and explained what we were doing and he cheered up real quick and was joking with Benjamin about who loved Maria the coy Colombian girl who had a little pink hand mirror and who had eaten the donkey's underwear. One other totally new boy called Ryan from Korea also made quite an impression. He did not speak English and the other Korean lad helped him but he seemed to be quite autistic anyhow. One second he was busy drawing amazingly tiny detailed apartment blocks in the corner of his A4 sheet and the next moment I looked up he had all the spare pencils stuffed on the inside of his spectacles like some medieval anti-cavalry defense on his nose! You don't even have time to notice because there is so much else going on and if it is not disruptive then you just accept it!

I was quite curious about Benjamin saying that he spoke Liberian English and I looked up the strange and terrible history of that very unique West African country. It was, along with Egypt, the only African country not to be made a colony but like Egypt, that is not quite true. It was actually 'colonized' by freed Afro-American slaves who were told by president Munroe that America would never be a pleasant place for black people and they were best going back to Africa. They honoured his cynical tip by naming their capital city after him, Monrovia, but they were also immigrants and there were problems with the local population who they imposed their US style inspired government over. These immigrants spoke the original Liberian English which is now based around a bunch of towns in Liberia named after old slaves homes in Louisiana! Only in the last 10 years was power taken from the Afro Americans and a leader from a local ethnic group ruled. But even this was not normal. The current president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is the first and only female African head of state and is quarter German and 3 quarters local tribes and was brought to power on the back of an amazing popular upsurge of protest after over 12 years of terrible civil war. An amazing woman, a simple mother of several children called Leymaa Gbowee convinced other Christian AND Muslim women to join her in peaceful praying in the markets for peace. This movement exploded and soon they were forcing the terrible leader Mr Charles Taylor to open peace negotiations with the other waring factions. They even blockaded the presidential palace where the negotiations were taking plays in Ghana and would not let anyone in and out of any doors or windows until peace had been agreed on! The story is very moving and she is one of my new heroines!

Anyhow, back to school: the older kids were also nice but some of the Afghanis were a bit lippy and bossy to the girls. The oldest kids were very hard to inspire. They did not want to draw anything. One boy whom trouble seemed to gravitate around was having a hard time drawing a pizza to express his Italian heritage and when I came up to see if they needed help I heard him defending anti-evolutionary theories against two Iraqi boys:
"Of course evolution happened you fool!"
'N0 it didn't, you can't proove it!'
"You probably believe in aliens too!'
"Everyone knows there is life on Mars!' ... and so on! Pretty ripping debate! Another class of the same age-group was remarkably attentive and much nicer. They got stuck into the mask workshop and helped eachother. Two boys in the corner pretended to be old men on the park bench grumbling and pretending to attack each-other with scissors but actually being quite chummy. Too bored to move or get involved at all but not upsetting anyone. A couple of the kids were interested in starting a chess club and one Chinese kid was quite persistant that I show him some breakdancing at the end of the class. Rita wanted me to play a song on the guitar but I could not think of any song that they would like so I went to the playground and did windmills, flares and nut-crackers on the AstroTurf which they all really enjoyed. One African kid was pretty good and he joined in which was wonderful and lots of others were interested so I think we will soon have a breakdance and chess club going and I have been learning some pop songs I think they will like so I will have something different for them next time: the final countdown, Bongo Bong, baby baby one more time and miss dinami-te-hee! With a bit more organisation I reckon I could get some good results from the kids and expand their minds a bit perhaps! So it was a fun day but I am quite fair-dinkum now! My cup of tea never tasted so good! Anyhow, I still had energy to go to the Zig Zag circus training but after I cycled half an hour to an almost desolate part of town I found the youth club was full of chubby women doing aerobics! I used my new WOW WOW WOW mobile phone to find out that the website was incorrect! So I cycled home and chatted the evening away with Erko and Louise and Mr and Mrs Martucci. They are both so nice to me. I have my own bedroom which is so cosy and full of their kids artwork and lovely fairytale books and art books and much more! Things have become much better! Also much less sleep! Wo hoo!

lots of love

jimmy

xxxxxxx

china boarder from siberia TO FINISH

2010-10-06T18:49:00.001-07:00

I just arrived in China... Manzhouli, exactly the same border town I came to 4 years ago. It was a more epic journey last time... crossing Siberia in November with my girlfriend with no money busking in minus 18 celcius to get enought for the trains and rushing so I would get out before my russian visa expired. This time it was a little more mellow, money was no issue so we messed around much more eating well. We left tallinn 11 days ago and stayed a night in moscow and partied out quite hard there before an overnight train to nizhni novgorod on the wonderful volga river. My friend there has moved to a gypsy village over the river where we got our fortunes read by a dark gypsy women who told us her granny was estonian and a lot of twaddle about getting married and settling down and getting a big car. Another overnight train to Izerbsk which is a bit off the transiberian railway route.

My painting of Nadya playing beautiful Udmurti songs to me in her kitchen!

We met Erko's friend Nadya who works in the House of the Friendship of Peoples. She is Udmurti, a finno urgic cousin of the Estonians in the urals but the language does not sound very estonian AT ALL and they are famous for their red hair and ... not sure.

Tom and Nadya

Well, she sings really nice and we went to a tea party with an oriental tea drinking action going on and lots of ambient bird song music and they asked tom and me to play and so we played 3 songs and everyone started going wild and loving it and I stopped early, leave them wanting more, after Tom and I had thrown ourselves around the floor and the point had been proved.
Two Finnish girls took over a little after us and managed to calm things down a little with their sad songs. I knew one of them from a Katja's wedding last summer in Finland. I would have happilly joined them on their ethnographic search for music in Russia and China but we have this stupid flight to Australia from China to catch. I wont do a big journey again with a deadline this fast ... planes really suck! anyhow, we rushed out of that scene, managed to catch the midnight train east to novosibirsk with sunny weather all the way. beautiful scenery... best time of year to travel. such brilliant autumn colours outside. Fantastic. Whenever the train stopped for more than 20 minutes (a few times a day) we would rush out and organize a football match near the station with local drunks or i would practice breakdancing in the station hall with the brilliant marble floors. We took another long train from Novosibirsk past Bailkal lake to Chita and arrived there this morning. That was a nice ride, except for the drunk soldiers who cornered me in the smoking wagon and would not let me leave until i had drunk their beer with them and Tom and Erko's battle with the mother of train (wagon guard woman) trying to buy a boiled potato off a woman at the platform... the potato war. A few drunk soldiers, funny babooshkas and screaming kids but all great fun in the end. Erko has wonderful charm and could make the most horrid witch of a train conductor smile. He would just start telling them we were going to Australia from Estonia and where we were from and opening up so cheerfully and they became sun-shiney people when before they had been telling me to stop playing music in the smoking room or to tidy up my bed. He is a brilliant traveling companion and tom would have erko and me in stitches with his stories about containers and how to spell fridge. We decided i would have PARTY ON DUDE on my gravestone and Tom would have NO-ONE BELIEVED ME!
I think we have to go soon lots of love jimmy x

AUSTRALIA II Train from Perth to Adalaide

2010-10-05T03:18:00.001-07:00

Erko outside the Indian Pacific train in Cook

Hi everyone

hey I made it to Adelaide almost exactly one month after leaving London! I have so much to say but wont write much right now... hopefully find time soon before I forget it all. Basically I am not regretting this journey at all. It has been very interesting and I think it is really helping me with my confidence traveling independently and besides I am having a wonderful time.

The train journey took 2 days from Perth in western Australia to Adelaide. A lot of desert but I was so busy having fun that I was not watching it too much. I was sitting next to a very mellow truck driver from Kangaroo Island who was plastered with nicotine patches, he said they were great, you can even taste the nicotine on your tongue. I asked him if there were lots of kangaroos on Kangaroo island and he gave me a little look then said that sometimes there are a lot. He said he once killed over 2 dozen because they jumped into his truck as he was driving. "Kangaroos just have NOOOOO sense of road safety! Same as Koalas, but you have to stop for them. Unlike the other animals which you would not mind killing, Feral Cats and crows... they get out of the way!" So for two days and two nights I spent my time playing music, chatting, eating, playing cards, making friends and popping out at the towns to run around and see what is happening.

Sadly we lost my fishing stool and football in Kalgoorlie the town with the biggest open mine in the world ... or maybe just biggest gold open air mine... I did not see that but it is the archetype cowboy town ... I felt like i was in the cowboy playmobile set I had as a kid. Wild bars staying open late for the minors to come after their 12 hour shift when then get drunk and eat and spend money on girls... maybe a little less honky-tonk than that but that was the impression.

Erko in a bar in Kalgoorlie

A very authentic gold rush atmosphere. I went into the first bar and introduced myself to everyone... i shook everyone's hand.. about 50 people... it only took a couple of minutes. Leonardo was celebrating his birthday with a huge gang of mates... all lads... we played happy birthday for him and they all went mad... cheering JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY then I breakdanced a bit and some other kid did a wicked worm so I did some more moves then moved to the next bar... and we climbed on the roof of hotel where Erko kicked the football but could not find the football and the owner phoned the police so we left quick! I was wandering down the road looking at the bright southern hemisphere stars for the first time in my life and a huge road convoy went past... a truck pulling about 4 container-sized trailers! Amazing and pretty scary!

Toilet in Cook

In Cook we also got out in the middle of the day for a short wander about and that was proper desert! Nothing but brush and dust for as far as the eye can see... amazing bright sunlight glare and a few ramshackle corrugated iron shanty huts, a couple of small prison cells under a tree and not much else!

Some nice girls I sketched in the train

We had a little concert jam session on our last night in the train and I took over the restaurant car with nice sing along like songs. Nicole sang very nicely with me and some of the other travelers too. Earlier in the day I did a sketch of the bar:

The Indian Pacific train from Perth to Adelaide - the restaurant car

After Kuala Lumpur, I am delighted to find that the weather at the moment is absolutely wonderful... not hot at all... just pleasantly warm and sunny during the day and the fresh side of chilly at night... So after much excitement and dozing and chatting and long train activities, including Chinese chess and all the different card games we have learnt these last 3 weeks on Asian trains.. we arrived in Adelaide this morning and my aunt Lindsy was on the platform waiting for me... lovey to see her... i was just introducing her to Erko and Louise and our new train friends when i noticed someone was standing quite close and stone the crows there is cousin Harry grinning his grinniest grin. Uncle Johney was on his heels and cracked jokes and had me in fits of laughter... he has a really infectious laugh and great sense of humour. they took me to their home and we had porridge together in the garden with the exotic birds and the freight trains passing behind the back hedge then i had a nap and have been exploring Adelaide for the rest of the day... very nice looking place except for the 70s tower block excrescence, at least it does not look too pretentious. Much bigger town than i thought and reminds me a little of New Orleans with its colonial lay out. I am sure I am going to have a lot of fun here! We are setting off to see a jazz band now in Light square (Colonel Light designed the town before dieing a premature death 3 years later from exhaustion it seems).

I go to the primary school tomorrow where i will teach to see what the deal is. I have to get a document from the police proving i am not a molesterer and a SIM card for my mobile phone!!! fancy that!!! and hopefully in the next few days i will be finished my paintings on the trains and towns of this journey and have some interesting new pictures on the website!
wish you all the best
lots and lots and lots of love
xxxxxxxx
jimmy
xxxxxxxxx

ps if you want to write to me here is my postal address until the end of November
JIMMY MONAHAN
C/O Martucci Family
9 Pulsford road
Prospect
Adelaide
South Australia
OZ

WEEKEND IN DEVON

2010-08-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

I have just come back from a wonderful weekend with the HOTSY TOTSY in Devon. On friday we took a train from London to Exeter. There was a lovely Eritraen family sitting next to us on the train and the children were very excited looking out of the window and whooping at all the cows and horses and the rivers. The smallest boy had us all laughing when he told us about going to the sea to catch a fish or maybe a wooden whale and how he did not like the yellow trains because they were stuffy and when absolutely everyone in the train burst out laughing he turned to his brother (about 6 years old I think) and started pummilling him and saying "Its NOT funny!".

From Exeter we took a little bus along very tight winding roads to Chagford. We had to reverse at lots of spots where there was no room in the tiny hedged lane for cars to pass eachother. We got chatting to a lady living in Chagford who was originally from California. I told her we had no place to stay and at the gig somehow a lovely lady found heard the news and put us up. Her lovely boyfriend Phil took us back to her house (she went to bed early to go to work next morning as a nurse) and we were treated like guests of honour. The next morning Phil drove us to Embercombe, a pretty hard destination to arrive at by local transport... door to door! He was our first guardian angel of the weekend. He is a bass player with THE INVISIBLE OPERA COMPANY OF TIBET and several other bands and has lived the life of a solid musician. He has definitely heard the chimes at midnight and was really lovely to all of us! He went out of his way to drive us to Embercombe even though he was going to arrive late for his auction at Bovey Tracey. What a wonderful guy!

It was great to see all the folks at Embercombe again! It is an alternative community on the western edge of Dartmoor (http://www.embercombe.co.uk/). The people there are so lovely and really sincere. Caring for eachother and their visitors and the earth and our common future! Jo, one of the chief organisers and organic farmers on the site was turning 60 and he was partying to the max. It was a lavish spread of food and we had a swim in the lake and eat our fill and more before playing a couple of sets on the small stage. It was really fun. Several other performers did their thing and I stayed up till around 3 or 4 am (a long time in the country where the nights get dark soon) getting in and out of the hot tub, dancing and jamming out with Tom beneith the wonderful firmament of stars. The next day was all about jamming outside our teepee where we had slept and more swimming and stretching and eating and music and nice shared conversations with the visitors. All lovely people! it was so relaxed and friendly and fun!

This is where our new guardian angel Greg took over. He is a professional guitarist and mouth harmonca player who has a studio for his wrapping paper company near the Dart river towards Totnes but mostly sleeps in the back of his beautiful van. We all piled in and he drove us to Totnes... once again door to door. We had a little picnic in the park on the island in the river dart then strolled up the hill to the Barrellhouse for the gig. We started when the first person walked into the bar and since we had nothing to loose I danced and gave it a bit too much... good time to test out stuff in an informal setting. The first set was fun but the second set really took off when lots more people came out of the night streets and started dancing like mad and after our last song Laurence came up with the wolds most perfect encore! I heard the first few chords and then sussed what he wanted to do and leapt up onto the bar counter and standing next to the spinning silver disco ball I started playing ITS A WONDERFUL WORLD! When Wednesday started singing it was so beautiful i wanted to hug everyone in the audience and I tried with one arm while playing the melody but it went a bit wrong anyhow, people got the idea. It was one of the very very very few times, or maybe even the first time, when i actually felt the thrills and shivers on my back while playing! It was truly wonderful and after the gig I went about with the hat and embracing everyone! It was brilliant! A wonderful shared experience.

We said goodnight to Greg and he went back to the pub. We will meet again. He handed us over to our next guardian angel, Helen. She is the mother of a former flat mate of Laurence and took us to her small home outside Totnes where we filled the sitting room and spare room with our sleeping mats and bags but all to her delight. She is the loveliest lady and her boyfriend, an artist from a village not far away, makes wonderfully simple and moving watercolours and 3D models and automatons from scrap paper and card. He is so inventive and his work is so positive and full of unsophisticated beauty it reminded me of some great Japanese artists.

We slept long and hard and in the morning took a very long leasurly breakfast and a walk in the local hills before getting a ride to the station and taking the train to Dawlish where we all jumped out and messed around for a couple of hours on the beach and strolling around town watching the Dawlish carnival. The best part by far was the sack races with a bucket on your head! It was truly wonderful! About 60 kids were involved and we laughed and laughed and laughed as they hopped, fell, bumped into eachother and tried different techniques. The funniest was the little boy who moved off at a snails pace and the girl who did not even bother to look out of the hole in her bucket hat but just leapt forward at top speed bumping into anything in her way!

The train was delayed at Exeter so Tom and I had a breakdance session for 40 minutes there before our train eventually arrived. Who should be on it but our little Eritraen friends who we had sat next to on our outward journey. I came to visit them but like me they were all very exhausted after a wonderful weekend and were all asleep. I followed suit and slept until Paddington station. I met them again at the platform but the small boy was too tired to care about who he met so i just gave his brothers high fives then tootled back home to kings cross!

A wonderful weekend, lots of thanks to all the in band, Phil, Helen, Greg, Jo and the many others who were so kind to us!

lots of love

jimbino

xxxx

Paintings from Asia

2010-08-11T11:18:00.001-07:00

LUANG PRABANG on the Mekhong River

THE CAPITAL OF LAOS

Buddha statues under a tree

The ukulele player for Jaja band in Nagoya Japan in JAJA BAR!

Our hostess in Nagoya in a temple there with a hippy playing jewls harp in the background

Here is a small selection of paintings from Asia when I was there 3 years ago but which I only recently finished. Above is a Noh theatre performance in Japan and below are some of the characters in the traditional masked play:

A kind of devil dog

A royal hunter who slays the devil dog

Some priest or king or samarai

A chinese lady playing a kind of Tsimbalim

Tea cup and Lindyhop dancers sculptures and breakdancer

2010-07-08T23:29:00.001-07:00

THE BUSCUIT AND TEA CUP

A mug I made for my dad, you can drink tea from the top and put buscuits to keep warm

in the mouth lower part!

My cup for my dads birthday, with a mouth where he can put his buscuits... not an original idea but an original nose for sure!

I based the figure a bit on my memories of the Green Man

of English myth... he is a wild fella who carries a huge club and represents fertility!

A present for my wild dad! May his energy never diminish! He he!

SCUPTURE OF ALEKSIS AND HANNA REETA

I made a small 15 centemeters high sculpture for our Finnish friends who invite Triin and myself frequently over to Finland for gigs in Tampere at the swing dance school there.

They celebrated their wedding in mid Febuary 2010 but the piece was not yet quite finished.

Hopefully by April it will all be glazed and maybe even painted.

They are a lovely couple and also very good swing dancers with an appetite for fun.

Breakdancer

This is a sculpture of a breakdancer which I made while studying Art Foundation at Filton College Bristol in 2001. I exhibited it in France that summer in Fougeres during my time as a Young European Artist in residence near the castle there and one of the local kids we were breakdancing with stole it from the gallery. Quite flattered! He could have taken the Video player!

artwork summer 2010 estonia

2010-07-07T06:08:00.001-07:00

Stadium in tallinn with Edwin my Latvian friend posing.

Some paintings from Tallinn which will describe my life there a little in the summer!

A free open air concert outside the house where I live (Uus Maailm Community House) by visiting Finnish French duo called the bee and the blue sky.

Marta Marmor making string at the Uus Maailm street festival 2009

Some friends at Uus Maailm seltsimaja. Including Erko, Ivo, Eliisa and Maria. Funnily enough the picture of Erko on the top left looks a lot like my friend Bots! Close up pictures below:

Eliisa Ehin

Ivo

Erko, one of my living heros!

My football buddies who live near Triin's flat in Tallinn. From left to right: Artem, Erik, Maxim and Ahmed. They are all Russian speakers with virtually no understanding of Estonian. Ahmed's parents are from Adzabaijhan.

Hannis and his friend playing chess in the courtyard of Uus Maailm. They both work at the Velokuur, the community cycle workshop helping customers to fix their own cycles.

Maria, a lovely Tartu girl who bravely tried to make a documentary about our band in Tallinn.

A coloured in stencil of the bridge bordering Uus Maailm quarter from Kriistina. It looks like a cover of a detective novel. I really like this style and would like to experiment more with it.

The blues man, visiting musicians come and play concerts in our yard. This was a great show by a top New Orleans blues musician. This party continued until the police came.
Pirita beach lies a couple of kilometers east of Tallinn. It was the site of the 1980 watersports olympics and is a lovely spot to bath and relax.

The amazingly entertaining Estonian Blind Orchestra (find out more in my seperate blog all about them entitled Blind Orchestra of Tallinn).

Ago Niklaas, Triin's lovely flatmate. Like everyone in that flat he is a music student. A wonderful young lad who is now serving in the Estonian army for his 1 year compulsary service.

Clarinet player in the theatre in Tallinn

Estonian Banana

Drunk young Finn at my friends wedding carried to the sofa to relax.

My brothers Tom and Louis at New Romny Station on the minature railway in SE England

Tom, Louis (in chair) dad and Klara at our camping site on Romney Marsh July 2010

Brighton Beach, summer 2008 I think

Triin and some other musicians at Herrang dance camp July 2010

A summer's day in Tallinn May 2010

2010-05-31T16:13:00.001-07:00

Then we go to the market around the corner where the Georgians and Azabaijanis and Russians sell their fruit and nuts and out of date canned food. I bought a packet of peanuts that should have been eaten in 2008, they tasted quite wrong.

Triin and I played a bit of music by the entrance of the market in the sunshine. The Russian drunks danced a bit. We played a bit of jazz but I feel much more connection to the people when we play Russian music and we actually earn more money that way too. I feel like a duke box when we play the American jazz but the Russian music really connects with the audience and many people smile and talk to us. There is a poor guy with a long beard whom I played a happy estonian song for. He looks like an Old Believer: barefooted and treading slowly, eating scraps of food left in the market and sharing his bread with the pidgeons. He does not care what other people think but seems to want to do nothing but good to the world and live like a bird. He gave us a russian magazine about healing plants that looked really interesting and I offered him money but he refused saying: "I dont need to buy anything."

I reflected about him for a while. And later when I saw the young estonian girl zooming along the street on a motorized soap box think that is popular these days, I wondered if my friend would do that, just for fun... unlikely somehow but I could picture his beard in the wind and a smile on his face. Maybe it is silly to think that, he probably loves his walks with nature.

An old sailor came and talked to us as we were packing up, he told Triin all about his rollocking life. He played violin and one night at sea he decided to learn a classical piece and he practiced it until the dawn and since that day all the crew called him Paganini so that became his nick name. He left the navy and joined the house of composers, a soviet kind of trade union and worked there as a secretary for years and knew many of the Estonian composers that Triin had to study about for an exam so she got a lot of inside knowledge there. I smiled when he talked to me not understanding a word he said but he did not mind.

I went back to triins place and watched TV - I was very tired. Triin cooked me a lovely meal with the food we had bought in the market and I cried a lot as I watched a programm about a Welsh choir. Welsh music has always touched me very deeply and I get very emotional about it. Maybe I missed my homeland, or I wanted a homeland to miss, anyhow, I felt lost and confused but the music was very beautiful and it make me want to come back one day and write songs about our valleys and hills and try not to feel like a fraud.

I left the house and sketched the street outside the market. The market had closed and I drew the big chestnut tree with the leaves all flying like hundreds of green flags in the wind. The road was empty and bare and and in the distance the factory chimney stood proudly. The grey housing blocks were still and clean in the sharp sunlight. My little friends came to talk to me: Erik, Ahmed and a couplle of others. They are russia speakers who live near Triin and we play soccer together a couple of times each week. They are all under 14 and very social with me but not so nice to Estonians sometimes. I offered to put them in my drawing and they patiently sat and chatted. They have a very free life walking around with their friends most of the day in the summer when the sun shines.

I played some music outside the old bookshop in the centre of town opposite St Nicholas church. The clouds above are fantastic. Tallinn truly has great clouds in the sunshine, real puffballs, rolling monsters in the sky beefing up and booming and crashing and such solid white you could drop a ton of lead from above and expect to see it bounce bounce bounce. After a little music I cycled to the community house where I also often sleep. There was a movie night going on. I painted a bit, getting ready for my exhibition, in fact I painted until the early dawn. At 3am a neighbour came by and asked if he could come in and he chatted to me as I finished my last painting. He has 6 children from two wifes, both divorsed, and is a writer. His daughter had her 7th birthday party today and she is such a lovely girl called Sissy, one of my best friends here. People here really are lovely but maybe a bit precautious for me. Too careful somehow, but the Russians provide my rougher entertainment if I so desireth.

The Russians are so open and although they are isolated from the world somehow they are also intelligent. I get a lot of practice talking to them. Estonians all speak good english it seems, so I find it harder to enter their mind word-world. Still trying to get there!

It is 2am again; the sky is a deep blue like the bottom of an exotic sea and in the distance a strip of white is shining where the sun is leaking over the horizon. I am going out on my bike to Triin's place through the empty streets clean from the sun and the wind and the silence. Going out alone at this hour and this time of year is a spiritual quest. The long days of sunshine steal your weariness away. Triin is cooking me a cake for a midnight feast and maybe I will paint a little more when I get there.

My soul is relaxed from a long day but not tired. My mind is as clear as a glass of green tea but mostly because it is not thinking about anything too much. The girls are all so beautiful here that you stop feeling attracted by beauty alone, since they are all so healthy looking.

What is most important it seems to me is the mental connection. That is definitely one of my priorities for falling in love, like Benjamin Zephaniah says:

Sure I want to touch your body

But first I've got to touch your mind!

And now, without any carnal feelings at all I will ride out alone on the streets under the theatrical orange street lamps across this flat town full of so much miraculous beauty, so beautiful at times that it feels like my mind is going to burst as I contemplate it all.

BLIND ORCHESTRA RECORDING SESSION

2010-05-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

On saturday I woke up early in the New World community centre and dashed round to the Blind Peoples House where the Blind Orchestra practices. I am a member of the orchestra but dont worry, my sight is still fine, people with good vision are invited to join to make up the numbers. There are only about 5 or 6 fully blind people and a few more with other sight problems but most of the rest tend to be pretty wacky characters, even though yours truly says so himself! On Friday we had a last rehearsal before the big recording session due to take place the next day in a church in Nomme, the leafy suburb of Tallinn.

During the rehersal the pecussionist, a wild looking man with a huge beard and beady eyes, made more beady still by his telescopic spectacles, had me in stiches. For one song there was no music for the second clarinet so I just watched and listened. For this song wildman on percussion has to play maracas. He started off sitting down but gradually worked himself up until he was standing next to the conductor almost turning piruettes and all the time puffing and panting through his toothless mouth. The thing is no-one really notices because they are looking at the sheet music and he is hilarious in the tiny movements and gestures and facial expressions. I chatted with him in the break and he told me in Russian that he knew the conductor from playing 30 years ago in the Soviet Army band. Back then he played euphonium but since he lost his teeth he could not play that any more... I cant imagine how he was on the euphonium.. something like a Red Army version of Thelonius Monk I expect! It must have been hilarious!

Triin slept in very late so I cycled with her to Nomme through the forest and past the graveyard. At the top of one hill there is a great view over Tallinn, the soviet appartment blocks, the industrial port and blue sea behind them. The clouds were beefing up in the sky. The fir trees had been cut down to allow strollers to look out over Tallinn but without them the hillside was eroding into a huge sand pit. In the small centre of Nomme we found the orchestra in the Pitbull pub. It was the sunniest day imaginable and they had somehow once again chosen to gather in a dismal basement pub. Anyhow, there was one cool thing, they had old receiver telephones on each table and you picked it up and ordered your salad. My vegan option was so complicated the cook came out and got it in person! I think the bar was based on some kind of Sherlock Homes theme but the huge mini cinema screens showing motorbike racing and tennis detracted a little from the mood. Anyhow, I saw some cracking womens tennis finals on the TV before Triin and I pottered off to the small church behind the station where the recording was going to take place. The mikes were being hung and chairs put out and since we had woken late for the rehersal and there was so little seating room anyhow the conductor asked if we minded supporting the audience. I can understand why on such a sunny day so few people had turned up to sit in even such a pretty little church. It was good to be outside. The few who had come looked like they did not have much choice... old ladies who had been wheeled there. One old lady was so small and shrunken and skinny that she could have passed for a 8 year old girl... she wore a coloured dress and stockings and her feet dangled from the pew a few inches from the ground while I squeezed into the same sized pew nearby. She had a shaking condition which meant she was eternally rubbing her hands like Shylock but she seemed very happy and spirited. When all was ready the unshaven priest made a little talk about music like a man talking to himself down a well. Triin told me it was nice what he said but not worth translating in detail. The music kicked off with some rousing polkas which were great fun. The little lady started rubbing her hands even faster like Shylock in the finals of the last round of 'Who wants to be a millionaire'. We should bring her round to New World community house kitchen, put her in front of the sink full of dirty dishes and turn some Shostakovich and the water on ... everything would be rubbed clean in minutes!

The action was getting more and more exciting and I was sketching away like mad! The maracas maniac was on a roll... hands in the air like he was a Russian soldier waving on the top of the Reichstag. The conductor tried in vain to get his AWOL pecussionist to stop shaking. He emphatically shook his head and glared at our rattling hear who in reply nodded affiably and started dancing around even more! Since he was at the back of the room there was nothing the conductor could do especially since the two sitting next to him in the corner were blind and unable to confiscate his maracas and since the whole place was all miked up to the gills for the live recording, words like 'put down those bleeding maracas' or 'won't someone disarm that cat' could not be spoken even in whispers! Meanwhile I was trying hard not to burst out laughing.

Luckerly for my bladder attention was drawn to the organ balcony where the blind girls (this time almost of all them blind) sang songs about happiness along with a cheesy cassette recording. The soloist was a young woman with sunken black eyes and a lovely soft voice. Quite moving. They were filmed from the balcony by the tenor player who was off musical duty today... I think he is a bit of a liability too. He was almost falling off the balcony to catch them on video.

The action returned to the nave where the blind clarinet player took a solo. He played very nicely indeed, such a beautiful tone and deft touch. I dont know if I sound like that but there is something lovely and soulful about the long clarinet notes. I can never tell if it is the musician the instrument or my mood. The accoustics were certainly very good. It is also amazing how different a clarinet sounds when you are not behind it but a little distance away! Totally different in some ways! He looked a bit like Bunyap Bluegum's uncle Wattleberry from the Magic Pudding, but without the sideburns. I sketched a few more of the other musicians, especially those with what I consider characteristic faces, very Estonian looking or special. The kind of faces that are too real to be ever shown on the telly!

I really enjoyed the music and would love to buy a CD. Even so, I was relieved they announced the last song, it had been a long concert but the drama was not quite all over yet. A gray haired and stern looking lady stepped up and presented some flowers to the conductor who bowed to the microphone. The lady said a few hefty words of praise and then said the priest was going to talk. I got the impression the priest was her son by the way she seemed to direct him. He hooted a little about this and that and how it was all down to god and then everyone stood to say the lords prayer but there was some confusion about if everyone should stand or not. By the time it was said most people had popped up and sat down a couple of times and then found they should sit down again. Just a bunch of yo-yo-ing to the Lords prayer! "Our father (boiingg) who art in (boiinggg) heaven... etc... etc..."

The grey haired soviet lady led the action out of the church into the lovely sunshine. I lingered by the doorway outside the locked toilet. A couple of minutes later two big musicians came out of the single boys cubical, both of them very chunky brass players. I was a little curious but as I locked the door behind me I smelt the sharp whiff of vodka! I think they had been having a little urgent communion in the boys' loo after a grueling hour long recording!

Triin and I cycled home in the lovely sunshine, stopping to pick marigolds by the railway track which she says she can make honey out of. We filled a whole plastic bag with marigold heads and came home in fine spirits.

one woman cant come... looking away

cant afford to come practicing at home

estonian government put in new pig flu vaccine for free go and vaccine yourself

young... NOOOO!

not like the tartu orchestra they drink vodka we play instruments

give bottle of vodka to 17year old birthday boy

where is the cake that Ed promised to bring

his brains are sharp he invented a new note stand... he is a great chequers player, not chess, that is too difficult! chess ...no.....

He is the captain of the blind team but he is not actually blind

Tallinn May 2010

UK and SPAIN old pictures

2010-03-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

Newcastle rooftops

Girona in Catalunya with Remei, Martha and Eva on the old steps

Jazz band in London

OLD PAINTINGS FROM ITALY around 2005

2010-03-15T06:42:00.001-07:00

Here are some old pictures while I was living and travelling around Italy in 2004-2005

This is just a small selection of over 60 paintings from the Alps in the very north of Italy all the way down to Palermo and Puglia in the deep south!

My guru in Firenze Italy

Motorway flyovers in Roma

Byron's Grotto on the west coast of Italy

Talis reading in Napoli

SPRING WEEKEND IN DEVON

2010-03-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have just come back from a very satisfying weekend in Devon. It was so beautiful... the wonderful countryside reminded me a bit of japan but much more mellow. I left on Thursday and hung out with my good friend Ollie in Bristol with late night chess games and the next morning we woke up early and shot down hill into town where I busked a little near the library where he works and then listened to Oli reading the GRUFFALLO and other stories to the kids! After that I hung out with Martin jamming a little in the sun and met some wild sleep deprived kids who were throwing umbrellas on College green and gave us a box of chocolates for helping them throw the umbrella until it was totally broken. Then i took an afternoon train to Totnes where i met Tom and Dad in the village market. It was so beautiful... i found a 55 pound clarinet in the market which i decided to buy as a spare london clarinet. The sun was shining all weekend and we cycled around 100 km over 3 days ... small rides from the station of Totnes (the ultimate hippy town) to our friends house in Ashburton on the edge of the moor and from there to the Embecombe community centre where we stayed in an old gypsy caravan and helped out with the festival on sunday. We were playing music and I played a lot of games with the kids and did my first proper round off somersault on the grass! it was very satisfying!!!!

Then on sunday afternoon we cycled over the hills to where a tall castle stood with a view to the moors behind us and the ancient city of Exeter by the blue estery before us lying in the valley and a long long down hill at top speeds under huge oak trees speeding past giant roots of old trees all stretching out in the spring sunshine. We arrived in Exeter and then caught the train to London and my friend was sitting next to us so we stayed awake a bit longer ... i was tired enough to sleep straight away but i wanted to chat with her!

then in london in the dark and i cycled over to my 82 year old hero's party where he was teaching party games! lots of wonderful people but i was late. It was strange cycling through london after 3 days of being in the country. When i live in london i look at all the houses and buildings like they were always there when i arrived back and cycled through the sunday evening streets I somehow felt the old trees and fields that had been there before and all the buildings seemed to be just made... not just made but i felt the sensation of seeing a new building in somewhere familiar where it had not been before.

The countryside, houses and weather were all totally fantastic and I feel full of life and energy.

lots of love

jimmy

xxxx

this was the website for the place i went.. it was great...

http://www.embercombe.co.uk/

ESTONIAN WEDDING ANNIVERSARYceramics winter and spring 2010

2010-03-04T00:29:00.000-08:00

THE ESTONIAN WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

In January and Febuary 2010 I worked in the ceramics studio in Meestre Hoov (the masters court) in Tallinn. I spent most of my time working on an epic sculpture of an Estonian dinner. I took the original sketches at Triin's grandfathers 50th wedding anniversary dinner in the summer 2009. There were a few neighbours with some singing and musical instruments and lots of drinks and a solid feast. I did not enclude all the characters... in all there were about 15 people at the party but I tried to get the general atmosphere of festivities a la Estonie!

The lady and the fella standing up are Triin's grandparents. Her grandad was firing on all cylinders and after we left the party they both went for a lie down in the early afternoon from all the excitement. Her grandma is a lovely soft stoic lady who is going a bit blind.

Below Original sketch of Vuints the moustache

This is my original sketch of Vuints (moustache). He played hot

accordian and was named after his sharp tash. Below is the result in clay.

There was a fair bit of Vodka as there must be at any serious party in Eastern Europe it seems. This neighbour was merrilly toasting. Generally the atmosphere was quite reserved despite the roudy behaviour of Triin's grandfather.

Behind this gentleman I had a bit of wall space so I put two paintings up. The one on the right is a country scene similar to something you may find in an Estonian flat, but which I took from the 10 Kroon note.

The other smaller portrait is Paul Keres. I dont think you would find this in any Estonian flat appart from his relatives. They are not very into hero worship it seems. Keres was one of the Soviet Unions top chess players. A grand master who narrowly missed being world champion. He is perhaps one of Estonia's most famous international figures and the only chess player in the world to appear on the national currency!

This is Triins dad enjoying his cup of tea. He is a big guy who works for a security firm but very friendly underneith. Behind him you can see the street and trees and the flat skyline with a few more Communist blocks scattered around. The party took place in a typical Soviet suburb called Mustamae which translates as black hill. That is probably not a natural feature of the landscape, estonia has very few hills, probably some industrial slag heap! But I am only guessing!

This is another neighbour enjoying her meal! The food was very simple and tasty - I could not eat the sausages and eggs and many creamy cakes but settled for tomatoes, black bread, pickled gerkins and boiled potatoes.

This is the left half of the scene. It had to be cut into two parts to fit into the kiln.

And this is the right half with the view out into the street.

I have been working a few days a week at a ceramic studio in the old town of tallinn, estonia. I have to greet customers and open the shop and be around to sell the artwork of a collective of around 15 ceramicists and for that i get free use of the atelier. actually, i get to work quite a lot because febuary is not a very busy month for tourists or visitors to the shop. I have been working on a few projects. This first big scene is about 40 centimeters long and made in white clay. It is inspired by a carving of some sweedish law court i saw in the stockholm art museum in july 2009. It is based on some sketched i did during Triins grandparents 50th wedding anniversary in their soviet style flat in tallinn in summer 2009. I tried to carve the scene but it is much easier to make out of clay... mistakes can be corrected with clay. I have not yet glazed it but if you have any suggestions for glaze please tell me soon!

Initial shaping of the figures

BELOW
The finished product, painted in April 2010 with gouache

SADIE and my journey back to London from Berlin in feb 2010

2010-02-28T19:20:00.000-08:00

Anyhow, tonight i got back in london 6 days after leaving tallinn just in time to dress up and shower and tootle off to the Jazz Bash at Dragon Hall. I was really giving all my energy and more and showing off to the MAX and at the end i felt quite emotionally drained and exhausted from the long travelling ... i came home and who saved me and made me stay up till 3am writing emails to my old buddies from lands afar.. ... yes you guessed it SADIE... may her yoga mat never get ragged... Now this might need some explanation. Dont worry I will explain all. Just 2 days ago i first met Sadie on the internet... I was hanging out with Christeen Weenie and she was going to go to bed but before she laid head on pillow she unrolled trusty yoga mat and youtubed sadie yoga and started some intense midnight stretching. You really try much harder when you have a yogi expert... even on a screen... egging you on. she is dead supple and had a very matronizing voice which i like. Well, to cut a long story short, i got hooked and as soon as i came back to the family nest and had some winddown time i introduced the brothers to Sadie... we did quite a few Fists of Fire and lots of Down Dogs and some Half Moon Adventures i think they were called. All very good for the energy flow. brother Tom joined in from the start and then after 3 videos even my little brother (well, he is technically much bigger and heavier than me) louis was doing it too... strange thing but i did not feel like making any lewd comments about sadie like i did when i stretched with Christeen in Berlin... maybe a bit shy infront of my brothers ... i think she also encouraged me with all her giggling and shocked sounds... but back at rome (i mean in london) i do as the romans (i mean londoners) do... all very stiff lipped and even Waterfall Warriors did not sound so funny as it did when i was practicing with Yogi Christeen Weenie.

So a lot of fun things happened in Berlin... history will remember very little of it but that did not make them still dead fun at the time and if you are born in the future and you never get to laugh and sigh and delight in reliving the glorious amusements and hilarious moments from my life... then I apologise... things are probably much easier for you than in my day anyhow. OK.. basically i had a lot of fun and not much sleep. I took a 5am train after a nights partying and chugged through the bundesrepublic all day satruday until i crossed briefly into holland in the afternoon and arrived in ghent around 8pm and met lotty and felix and annekke too in a bar. they did not have much exciting news... but that is not really a sign of being happy. They seemed good and it is always good to catch up with old friends however brief... each meeting is like a stich in your combined relationship and the more stiches the more close you become ... even if you meet only for an hour or so. well I was only with them for a bit... i took a late train to brussells and met my amazing friend stephan... he is such a sensitive pecussionist... he listens to the music in everything.. he is really wonderful... he made me a delicious dinner and then we went out busking with him on washboard around midnight outisde a shop selling lacework. After 3 or 4 songs this old arab dude in a black tuxedo and a silver playboy bunny medalion started dancing way too close to us and then giving us dozens of tourist brochures for bruxxles zoo and safari park and shopping malls... he had so many to give us. This other tall guy steped up and started playing my guitar and then left with his tail between his long legs when we politely asked him to leave.. the tail part was optional but appreciated. There was no one left in the streets except these wackos so we packed up... Stephen told me he knew a nice bar we could play. We came through a few streets in the drizzle and came to a cafe and who should be at the door but wacko number three.. i did not mention him earlier but he was listening to us busking and dancing way too close too just 20 minutes before... a dude with a big beard and rolling head and a big belly and red eyes.. infact probably a drunk homeless dude. So we went right in ... i am not sure our gogo dancing buddy from 20 minutes before even recognised us when we stepped right past him.

Inside a guy had just finised playing button accordian and a fiddle player just finished his song too... I think they were playing together. People clapped and we asked if we could play... we asked the barman. He was the dude behind the bar with very thick rimmed and thick glassed glasses and he said yes out of the corner of his mouth and poured us a beer to share ... most fruity. we played three songs... it was mostly me going weewaaaweewaaweewaaaa like a police siren and stephen playing solid rhythem... well,, i tried to play jazz but it sounded mostly like that perhaps. We got a free beer to share, as i mentioned before, but i had already drunk one earlier (not the one i mentioned before, a different one i had not mentioned before) and I was not interested. My friend Andreas from italy walked in through the door... quite by chance... i knew he was in brussels but had not planned to meet him. He was with a danish guy who played guitar and played a really long symphonic almost cool pop song with lots of different parts and few repetitions. It was really impressive. Then the barman played a bit ... all ghospel songs with his squeely little voice and really neat simple guitar playing and stephan playing spoons with him. it was great but i was yawning like a postman at 8pm. After that the funny barman started playing one of his own songs about a bar in oostend (a crappy violent seaside town in north flemish belgium) and it sounded really funny when suddenly across the room a spanish dude with a face like a yellow tomato started fighting the violin player... it was really silly... i did not understand anything but they almost broke the violin and everyone was trying to calm him down... one arab dude was telling him to breath through his nose (the spanish yellow tomato man) and the barman was pleading with him and a nice girl who told us she loved her music walked about saying OOOOh i hate the violence in french and shaking her head and stroking spanish tomato man and begging him to stop and he was proud and drunk. The violin playing man looked very upset and cuddled himself a bit and cried. It was so sad in a silly way but also exciting because it was a happening bar and maybe a bit of stupid violence is a fair price to ask from a lot of other really lovely dead open people at that bar! I really liked our evening on the town. i went back to stephens house and slept 'nagu kott'! ('like a bag' in estonian means sleep very well!) i woke up in the morning... had a little oatporrage then rushed off the the station... the eurostar was cancelled and they put me on the next train in 3 hours... i decided i would go and have a look round brussells. There was a local market with some really cool purple jackets and matching trousers and shoes and i decided to go and try them on... i was not sure if i would buy it but they did not have quite the right size anyhow but the nice guy directed me to the main shop about 20 minutes walk away near another big market called the abbattoir. I walked there and stopped at a cafe on the way.. they had some african version of MTV on and a black woman in bermudas and a t-shirt was singing about some guy who had left her to live in another town in africa or something and she was crying by a bamboo tree in her bikini. The bar was mostly full of men drinking their midday beer but there was one handsome african woman drinking tea and two other female travelers came in later. The boss served me the last coffee because there was no more sugar.. his wife had been working until 6am so she had no time to buy sugar that morning. i sat opposite an arab young man who smiled and soon we were chatting.. he was in brussells looking for work and just won 350 euros in the gambling machine the day before with just one euro coin he had found in the street. i told him i lived in estonia and he told me he had an estonian friend called something like Hilver... i dont know what he said but it did not sound at all estonian... but i believe him. he was dead nice... i left in a really good mood and found the clothes shop where i tried on about a dozen suits before i decided to buy a deep chocolate a purple stripy geometic suit with waistcoat and trousers and also sympathetically matching purple shoes. However after all the trying on... most of the clothes were too big ... and most of the guys who came to the shop wanting to dress in these really bling suits were too big too... so it took me a long long time to choose... at the end i settled on teh purple chocolate fizzy suit and some purple shoes but was in such a hurry that i took two left footed shoes and only found out when i got home to london and tried to put them on. I joked that they would be great for running around right corners because they were both left food shoes. I got the the station sat opposite a girl with long dark hair and a little dimple on her chin. She was reading national geographic and i took out the book on china that raffie lent me and which is really interesting but as soon as she put the national geographic down i asked if i could read it and i found out all about some tragic changes in an ethiopian tribe and then about wolves in north america and then a bit about shanghai (that did not make me want to return actually) and then something about somthing else. i chatted to the girl about what i read... i was really moved by the african story but she was more into the wolves. She told me she was from wales and working in amsterdam... it was not an amazing conversation but jolly enough. A little child stared at me as we got up to leave he really looked and looked without blinking... maybe it was the fur hat and my beard. anyhow, tom was waiting for me and i went to the jazz bash.. richie came but there was no vegan food like the flier said there wood be so he was upset about that... lots of good friends came infact... and it was a big sucess lots of dancing and i did some really stupid moves and some quite inspired breakddancing with tom but also a lot of bad playing... i really need a soprano sax. still it was a ball... i felt totally exhausted after all of that and came home to mums place even thought i was not meant to stay there. i think i got to write to sadie one day to thank her or make a reply video perhaps. so i feel energized now and very happy

but also tired enough to cuddle up in my jacket on the sofa and dedicate my energies to resting so tomorrow i will be a fit as a fiddle for our gig at 100 club.

lots of love

your overwhelming and joyful earth sputnik

jimbino

xxxxxx

dreams

2009-12-29T01:29:00.000-08:00

I have been recording my dreams on and off for several years but only once in a while do i draw what i dreamt.

Here are some stories of my dreams including illustrations. I hope you enjoy them. Psycoanalists are free to

deduce!

Lots of love

jimbino

xxx

dec 28/29 2010

wow i have been having such strong dreams just these last few days... last night i was in Estonia walking through a big park and i crossed a bridge and there was a palace on the other side. I went to the water to wash my cooking pot and suddenly lots of Russians came into the water too. One of them told me that Jesus was there. The water was really low but was rising very quickly and i looked out at the big lake and there were lots of bubbles on the water ... all different colours. The Russians were filling up their bottles with water and then emptying them or something... just dipping the bottles into the water again and again as the water rose. I looked at the beautiful bubbles on the water ... pink, green, blue, red, purple, yellow all the colours ... I thought... i have to come back and take a photo and suddenly i met my friend Roby who I love very much and only see once every 3 years. he was there with his girlfriend but she was very cool to me. He seemed distracted too and I had the feeling that he would have to leave very soon.

Behind the low concrete bridge the lake was full and the trees on the islands in the distance were black against the sunset.

that was the beautiful part of the dream but it went on... about being given a place to sleep in a big hall full of people and my younger brother lying down and kicking another boy lying next to him but not aggressively... but strange. It felt a bit like the big sports hall at Viljandi folk festival where i stayed last summer with Triin but also more old and dusty and like a squatted old public school.

FRANCE Paris October 2009

2009-12-18T03:04:00.001-08:00

In October 2009 Triin and I went to Paris and Orleans by Eurostar. Here are some of my paintings made on the journey when I was not sightseeing!

A cool French dude in the park smoking a cigar!

Our wonderful host in Paris, Mikhael and his girlfriend and Helene who I have known for a few years now.

Freddy, a wonderful musician and circus performer who took us under his wing in Paris and who performed with us in Orleans and showed me all the tricks of truly French driving!

Fantastic drummer who was playing at a squat open stage night.

JIMBINO VEGAN SONG BOOK

2009-12-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

I have just completed updating my song book which has 40 original songs which I have written since 2003. It also has original illustrations and photos and all the chords and some background information about the songs. Available for £4.

Here is an example of one of the songs:

I GET A KICK OUTTA YOU

June '08 London melody - August '08 Rockstock-Helsinki ferry text

Late last night I went to bed C/a-/d-/G7

Put a coin beneath my head C/a-/F/G

When I opened my eyes to my delight

My bed and I flew through the night

The sea below was as black as coal

The stars above as white as snow

In a dark wood we did land

Where my clarinet stood with outstretched hands

I get a kick outta you, can't take my eyes off you

The way you move, makes me feel so good

I get a kick outta you, all my dreams are coming true

Under the trees skipping ropes

Were dancing with happy jokes

They leapt and hopped and as they sang

The chimes of midnight slowly rang

Suddenly clarinet

Had vanished into the thin air

I looked throughout the forest

But of my clarinet I found no trace

I get a kick outta you, why did I take my eyes off you

When I danced with you, it made me feel so you

I get a kick out of you, with your magic red shoes

The pale moon danced like a goon

The silent streets sang harmonies

My clarinet took my rough hands

And lead me to a distant land

Where streams of living water flow

And snow-white swans to giants grow

I touched the mouthpiece with my lips

And found myself on a milk white ship

I get a kick outta you,

In the valley of death I fear I'll get ill

I get a kick out of you, reality all seems so unreal

The captain of the milk white ship

Was a crazy drunken insomniac?

He hunted for whales in the canals

While singing Turkish madrigals

He made himself walk the plank

And laughed out loud as his ship he sank

But I agreed with his philosophy

And jumped overboard shouting gleefully...

I get a kick outta you, when I think of you

I take a shower, when I take a shower

I think of you, I get a kick out of you!

Painting of me and the giant snowball

2009-12-16T09:08:00.000-08:00

I finished this picture in December 2009 to make into the family christmas card. It depicts a scene from January 2009 when there was a lot of snow in london and I went to Primrose Hill on Hampstead Heath with Bots, dad and Tom to sledge down the hill. Lots of people were going wild and some boys rolled a huge snowball which took some hours and then sent it down the hill and I jumped on it as it rolled and got thrown and just rolled out of the way before I was crushed. Ahhh, good times!

You can check the video of the event on youtube below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC0twcvcAnY

The finished Christmas Card with effects added by my clever mum!

CHILLING IN THE PARK

2009-12-15T05:36:00.000-08:00

This is a new song I wrote this summer in Tallinn sitting in the park after a breakdancing event on a sunday in late summer as the sun set

CHILLING IN THE PARK

Chilling in the park

On a holiday

As the sun goes down

Chilling in the park

feeling mighty fine

My feet are off the ground

I'm not in love

And I've been drinking no champagne

I'm high enough

Having spent this lovely day... just

Chilling in the park

Soon it'll be getting dark

Sun is coming down

So I'll tootle off back home

N' cook some macarone

Then stroll back into town

I'll do the shuffle, I'll do the rumba

And when the ladies ask for my number

I'll say "You don't need to call me honey

Cos whenever it is sunny

You can find me...

Chilling in the park! OY OY!

MAT'S PALACE

2009-12-01T17:48:00.000-08:00

Every sunday night Mat Parry (PAZ) is the host and chief organiser for a jam session in East London called Matt's Palace (after Chat's Palace where the jam session started until the venue moved a couple of years ago). Mat kindly pays me to come and sketch some of the talented and very friendly musicians and the scenes in the Princess of Wales pub by the canal on Lea Bridge Road in Clapton. There is a wonderful mixture of openess to all-comers and a deep desire to listen, experiment and communicate artistically and emotionally as a group through jamming.

Here are some of my pictures from that weekly event, if you want to use them for anything you are very welcome but I would very much appreciate being asked.

you can contact me on

jimmymonahan@hotmail.com

I hope you like it .. comments very appreciated!

Lance... top bass player

Roger... very very good bass lines.

Drummer at Matts Palace, jazz jam session in East London.

An old picture of a session just off Fleet street in 2007

2009 Mats Palace in the princess of wales

Great saxophone player! very nice stuff sir!

A sax on a table

Mat knocking himself out with that bass!

Mat

Haruna

Ollie and another tenor saxophonist

Ed Hicks

MASKS

2009-11-23T16:56:00.001-08:00

Here are a selection of masks I have made over the years. From small puppet

faces to larger shamanistic and theatrical masks. Hope you like them:

A bird head mask for my personal rituals

A papier mache gargoyle that fits on to the end of my clarinet

to make it look like a monster stick.

A small hand-held grouch mask to be turned into a puppet one day

These next few are characters from a russian fairy tale I directed and prepared called MOROZKO

BELOW: The beautiful daughter

The gormless and weak willed father

A pair of fruity lips

CERAMICS

2009-11-23T16:23:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my remaining (undestroyed, lost or given away) ceramics which i made mostly in 2001 while I was studying art foundation in Filton College Bristol

ABOVE: a bowel made with a honey glaze over two shades of clay thrown together.

Self portrait of me in clay covered with a gold coloured glaze.

Made in 2001 during my foundation art course at Filton College Bristol.

Above: a small expresso or saki glass in white with the japanese character for SNOW below.

A casserole bowel based on the song of the mock turtle from Lewis Carol. The mock turtle sings "SOOUUP GLORIOUS SOOOUUP, SOOUP OF THE EVENING, GLORIOUS GLORIOUS SOUP!"
ABOVE: the lid in the shape of the mock turtle

BELOW: decoration on the side of the casserole

puppet show THE FINNISH STREET MUSICIAN

2009-11-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is a short shadow puppet show i put on for the midsummer party in Finland 2009. I made stencils of the figures and will give a brief discription of the story here.

OK in the bottom left of this picture above you see the hero of the story... a street musician who plays jazz trumpet toot tooot toooooot! He was busking on the street one bright summer morning when the policeman comes to tell him to stop and just at that moment the lamp-post (far left) falls on the policeman and squashes him. The fellow in the towel is just a normal Finnish pedestrian taking some air from the sauna.

A few minutes later a butcher comes and yells at the street musician to be quiet but as he does so a thief runs out of the butchers shop with all his money and the butcher runs after him with a meat clever (but does not catch the robber because he eats too many sausages... instead he gets a minor heart attack.)
A horrible old lady screams at the musician and tries to pour a bucket of water on his head from her window but she leans too far and falls out and lands squish like an old tomato on the street and a flock of ragged infested pigeons peck away her stringy flesh in a couple of minutes.
Eventually the crowd develops and a couple start dancing and fall in love and have many kids and tip the musician generously and they live happilly ever after and the musician comes most days when the sun is shining and plays delightful music (a little bit more delightful each time as he improves!)

THE END!

LONDON october and november 2009

2009-11-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures I drew in London in the late autumn and early winter of 2009. These are various sketches made here and there... on the metro, at home, at a concert, in the street, in a park... etc... There are more pictures you can see in the MATS PALACE blog and MY HEROS blog too.

I hope you enjoy this eclectic unassociated group of pictures!

A Sheik gentleman on the district underground line near Whitechapel

early one bright afternoon in early october.

ABOVE: 3 mills studios in Bromley by Bow where LISPA school is situated in London

Penny a half dutch student at LISPA first year course.

Some students from LISPA on the opening day listening to the fire escape instructions.

Lawrence, a fantastic guitarist who I play a lot of music with this Autumn Winter in London.

MURAL IN MY ROOM IN UUS MAAILM IN TALLINN sept 2009

2009-11-17T10:41:00.000-08:00

This is the mural i did in our room in tallinn in the week before i had to leave. It is based on the tree in the garden. i was stretching under it one day and realised how lovely it was to look up at the branches so i did a sketch while lying on my back and then transposed it to our ceiling with spray paints.

Below is triin as a honey monster... eating spoonfulls of honey from a fresh pot!

THE STORY OF MY LIFE... part one my family!

2009-11-08T15:07:00.001-08:00

In the beginning there was a bog. It was drizzling and cold and the sky was grey. In a valley between muddy hills a bony man came along carrying a spade. He was small and hairy. He dug earth, put it in his wheelbarrow and rolled it to his small house in the shelter of some scrawny trees. He neatly laid the earth in rows behind the fire so it could dry. He worked hard and was the master of the house. One day he went drinking with his friends and went too far "I have not had a sip for a month, give me the bottle" he drank it all went home and jumped on his wife. The next day he had a bad headache but his wife was smiling. He dragged himself off to the bog to dig earth under a grey sky. On the way he spat a lot then finally puked up. On his way home the spot where he had puked up had turned into a slender willow and the places he had spat turned into small cotton plants. He cut down the tree and then picked the cotton. When he came home his wife was pregnant. He stayed up late and made a cradle from the willow and his wife made a blanket from the cotton. The next day they had a son. His son played in the hills and met a monk who locked him in a monastery and made him pray and study until the little boy was a scrupulous and pale faced stringy little scholar. After 7 years he grew a moustache and the monks told him he should go to the city to study law. He went home to see his family. He saw his father working in the bog and went to talk to him but his father did not recognise him and turned his back and continued digging earth. His mother was at the market so he left a note and went to the city to study law. There were even more monks than at his schools… thousands of them or shuffling about in their grey robes and dripping noses. In the school he was taught the methods of control for the giant empire which many years ago had invaded his land. He grew up and made much wealth and became one of the kings most sober-minded judges. He bought a large house on the outskirts of the city where his daughters could ride their ponies to the nearby beach when it was not too wet and where enjoy the country as he had done in his childhood. He had 14 girls and try as he might he could not get a son to continue his name then one day he met an old witch to ask her advice and she told him to drink a potion made from the mushrooms that grew between her toes and to put some of her earwax on his balls before having sex with his wife. He did that and true to form wife bore him a son. He had promised to give the witch 100 pieces of gold and a French kiss but the idea was so revolting that he offered to give her 200 instead. She took 200 hundred and pulled out a bottle of wine and slipped in a love potion inside which made him madly lustful so she got her money and much more than a French kiss. That was the last time he went to a witch.

Still he had a little son now and sometimes you have to do unpleasant things to get what you want. His son was the spitting image of himself and in fact grew up to be a judge just like his father and when his father died he grew his whiskers long like his father and wore his dads old clothes and worked in the same office. However one day his most beloved sister fell ill and the doctor suggested going to a warm climate. He applied to the king for a transfer and was sent to a distant tropical part of the empire where the King had conquered people of totally different races and traditions and imposed his rules upon them. To his surprise he really liked the warmth of the sun and the beautiful native women and their colourful traditions and his elite position of privilige among them. He fell in love with a rich and intelligent former princess of the land and had a mixed race son who entered the best new school in the land and was a limeric progedy. He would put his son on the table after dinner and the little half native boy would improvise witty limerics while doing somersaults between each stanza and everyone opened their mouths wide and screamed and involuntarily farted and laughed until they dribbled and fall head first into the curry. This happy life continued for several years until one terrible day when the Kings deputy in charge of the exotic land was celebrating his wedding. By this time our hero was an important judge in this far away land and was invited to the wedding. However in the depths of the slums of the city some destitute malcontent natives were far from happy at being ruled over by a foreign power. One saucy native with a vicious hatred of anything frivilish and terribly keen to impress his mummy decided to blow up the kings deputy.

The bitter conspirator crept in among the crowd with an icy heart and a soul full of hatred and anger at these foreign rulers. He waited at a crucial point in the parade close to where the rich carrages were going to pass. In the land of his birth, a tough mountainous place, gold had been plenty and even poor hard working peasants could afford golden rings and necklaces but silver had been very rare and only affordable to the most-wealthy. When the carriages came into his sight he saw a quite simple but silver coloured carriage just ahead of a more ornate but golden carriage and assuming that this beautiful simple silver carriage must contain the evil mouthpiece of the hated foreign king whose animal like soldiers had killed his brothers and sisters and commited gross crimes of impurity in his beloved land, he waited til it was nearby and then threw his bomb. As he ran he looked behind his shoulder and was shocked to see a beautiful native lady covered with blood being carried out of the wreck of the carriage by a mortified foreigner. The conspiritor felt pretty bad and jumped under a juggernault at the next village festival a few days later. The judge had been mistaken for the lieutenant and had lost his dearly beloved wife. The joys of living in the exotic land no longer held any attraction after that day… the colourful dresses brought bitterness, the exotic food turned to ashes in his mouth and the realisation of his position as a instrument of foreign oppression reminded him of his own conquered land where similar expressions of independance were taking place against the empire. He decided to go home and took his son with him… but back in his native land the revolutionary sentiment unsettled him… having seen the world he found the parochial and viscious minded malcontents who represented his homeland not to his taste. His childhood happiness was far behind him and he decided to settle his lot, unenthusiastically but decidedly, in the heartland of the empire where, despite the many wrongs commited in its name, educated and intelligent people could still talk crap about silly things round a warm fire smoking quality cigars. He moved to the very capital of the Empire and his young son, oblivious to the political questions that upset his father and full of the growing energy of youth, recovered much quicker than his father from the death of his mother and embraced the new lifestyle wholeheartedly. His privileged education continued and he became a doyenne of the arts, making a living praising the most elite and refined expressions of culture in this rich land. He fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy colonialist family. She had wonderful cool blue eyes and dark flaxen hair and would laugh and skip about with the voice of a hyena and the foot of a doe. His wife's life had been similar to his own, brought up in a distant part of the empire and now returned 'home' -she was gentle, beautiful and cooked a killer pot of tea.

He became a critic of ballet and opera and many a night he spent in gold leaved boxes looking down on dazzling swan like women floating across the stage to dream like arias. He was a great critic of beauty and came to consider it his professional duty to take his studies into the wonder for he female form and it manners and graces backstage. His swarthy exotic looks (remember his mother had been a native princess of that far away land) and his wide experience in life made him not unattractive to these young and unexperienced girls whose young lives had been mostly spent in rehersal rooms and expensive social balls. One or two had made eyes at him and fell under the spell of his charm during his journalistic interviews and naturally his wife grew jealous at their attentions and he thought what the hell and left her and their several children. He married a few more ballet dancers and had many children who he loved dearly but distantly not letting anything much disturb him from his love of life and beauty.

His first wife was left to look after her large family alone but he gave her a pot of gold so she was ok for money and she was not poor herself so she lived on in relative luxury and a great deal of comfort but behaved like a widow to her true love. She may have liked to marry again but unlike her wild husband she was more conscious of the whispers of society so she stayed a single wronged lady with many friends and quite happy and held all night card games with her buddies where they developed some very bizarre slang. She had three girls who were all beautiful and pretty smart for girls, she also and two sons, one much younger than the other. The eldest boy was very much fussed over and nagged by his Herpe-like sisters and he took his revenge by exploding paper bags behind them when they were kissing their young boyfriends in a quiet spot. He was very relieved when he had a brother and desperately tried to teach the young child to play boys games like bows and arrows and making temples in the garden and so forth: any manly sport which his sisters had never wanted to play with him. He was strong willed although not outstandingly intelligent. He inherited some of his fathers fire and passion for life without the wide experience and exotic charm. He wanted to be an architect from an early age and threw himself into his studies with all the energy and passion of youth. The empire by this time had crumbled like an apple crumble but a new more insidious mercantile empire was taking over the world and early on he noticed its creeping fingers scratching away the old traditions and communities of his hometown and decided he could best counter this by bringing the community together and struggling to save their lifestyles and group spirit. He fell in love with another archiltect on his course, a pretty and calm but spirited girl from a modest small town family. He met her at a brick fair.They married and she took on her role as a mother soon after and he continued to work as an architect and fight his pigmy battle against the new ruthless giants of the world. He did not manage to save peoples lifestyles because the monsterous power was too strong and rich and while he was a single man working with a bunch of local greengrocers, ironmongers, publicans and elderly residents, the monster had millions of slaves working night and day to break down the old structures of society and build new commercial centres where the slaves worked incessantly and the monster took most of the profits. But he DID manage to save many of the old buildings which the new monster wanted to replace with its modernist monolithic homogenous black towers. His wife approved of his hopeless cruscade but as the children grew up their material deprivations that idealism and youth can shrug aside became less comfortable and eventually they both went to the countryside to live like cavemen…. Separately.

THE END OF THE PART 1

LIZ' WEDDING bristol october 2009

2009-10-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

just got back from bristol for liz' wedding. After two days of practice tom told me on saturday morning that he was not sure if he wanted to come to Liz wedding in bristol. We managed to meet our ride at a lovely place in london.. this lady was so nice... she was a Jung analyst! WOW... so cool. We chatted a bit about psycology among other things on the way down.

She was really pleasant and friendly. We hung out in the main square of bristol eating chips until martin came in his car and took us to meet some acrobats and start throwing ourselves around with them: tom was really up for it and i managed to keep my trousers clean. Then we went to martins house to see his grand piano.. he told us a 15 minutes monologue in the car about how he bought it. Quite boring plot but impressive when you consider he was dodging other cars and pausing in the tale to abuse the other drivers and by the time I got to his house i got out of the car and thought, well that was a good story and then i step into his place and HOLY COW he has a huge grand piano in his front room. He played a few songs... it sounds great! i dont know what he will do with his trumpet, drumset, flute and computer composer now .... anyhow, we rushed back to the party to play... Jan from berlin was there and ed turned up soon later. It was great... tom played well and people were dancing and the highlight was a little 3 year old german girl who did a headspin with me... she had never done it before but managed a few rotations.

I was pretty high after the proceedings and it was very touching to see Liz and Ben dancing to zorba the greek. People were really happy with our music... i did a back flip off the amps and did not twist my ankle too bad. I was freaking out quite hard cos Liz doesn't get married everyday.

I had not slept much the previous two nights so i was pretty exhausted but decided to check out the after party... I was feeling really good and friendly with people... I sat on the sofa and listened to martin chatting... he is good at that... he just talks incessently about anything... quite impressive and pretty funny. His favourite subjects are violence, women, musical instruments, attacking other breakdancers, famous people he knows, how to make money and generally how bad the world is and how it justifies his unscrupulous money making methods. Having said that, he may be a tough businessman but I defy anyone not to fall under his charm and as a friend he is very loyal and generous! I stayed the night in his house... in the strangely empty room with a squeaky bed... as i fell to sleep at 3 am he started playing drum set upstairs with a voice sample of him singing in the back ground... 'I want a sunday-love, that does not end on saturday-love!'
In the morning i had trouble waking him up with a cup of tea. We left for Emily's place to find that tom (who had slept there) had taken the train back to london. Martin and i drove to quaker meeting and sat in silence. I was impressed by the ministery... they were talking about really important things and it was good to see idealistic adults speaking with energy, belief and authority about really important matters. I think i will attend more quaker meetings actually - good people. Most adults are just smug about their plexi-screen TV and big car and have obtained their life-long ambition of being comfortable and having what everyone else has. Quakers are really different... good people concerned about the world. They can be a bit cautious but I still admire them. In the middle of the silent meeting, Martin announced... without standing up as is custom... that he had two japanese made industrial water purifiers to the value of 20,000 pounds lying unused in his sitting room if anyone had a use for them... if no-one could have heard me i would have laughed like a chimp. He told me after he was inspired by the short first ministary about the waters of life and the second ministery about getting up and doing stuff... 'well, water IS the water of life so I decided to tell them about my water purifiers'. At shared lunch after one lady who knew martin told him such an offer was better suited to business news and martin cut her short saying it was not a business offer but out of the goodness of his heart and just a practical piece of ministary. He tore into this lady as soon as we got back to the car on account of her marrying a man who used to work in weapons research 'to burn children' while Martin was a "thoroughbred quaker" who was educated in a quaker school in York!

We went to find my good friend Ollie but he was out... real pity... and then went back to Emilys to say goodbye. I planned to take the train back to london but martin offered to drive me... i wish i had refused... i could have slept in the train and it only cost 25 pounds.. .but he wanted to come to london to see a friend and said i could pay him the 25 quid... he gave me a nice blue jumper with MR MARTIAN in big letters on it... so i was happy to give him some money. I should have been more focused... i had been told that the roads in to london on a sunday are terribly packed... sure enough the journey took 4 hours instead of 2 and martins conversation about women and abuse of other drivers became a little heavy... he must have cursed over 100 other drivers during the journey and promised to shoot about 15 who he thought were trying to personally offend him. we eventually made it to acrobatics in london only 1 hour late and i started training... martin was not too into it and did a few flips... the instructor came and asked him if he wanted to learn how to do clean back flips and martin said he would stop training and sat on the side lines for the rest of the session.
We drove home and FINALLY I got out of his crappy car... god i did not walk anywhere since i met him yesterday ... inside a car you cant hear the noises of other cars ... just your stereo... but when the windows open you realize how much noise you are making... inside a car ever other car is not a person but a big piece of metal that gets in your way and even women with prams are obstacles that slow you down... martin himself quite characteristically started cursing some women with her kids... 'Who asked you to litter the earth with your vermin?' She could not hear and it is sometimes funny but maybe too offensive for the average citizen who would not see the deeper issues in his comments which often dont have any deeper issues. Funny guy but like most funny guys i know, just messing with words and ideas and rarely putting them into effect and also it is too easy for them to abuse stuff without actually trying to do anything about it.
Anyhow, back at home we eat and watched a Kurismaki movie then Martin started chatting to louis about the music business and then he left and i recorded the weekends adventures... a fun trip to bristol but boy am i glad to be going to bed!

UUS MAAILM STREET FESTIVAL Tallinn aug 2009

2009-10-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

Me as a stamp!

I have spent a wonderful last few weeks living in a suburb of Tallinn, Estonia. It is an old wooden house where triin and I rent a large room ... enough space for all our trash and even my new TUBA fits quietly in the corner! Yes i just bought a tuba to make even more noise! I can make pretty good elephant sounds and can even play 5 or 6 notes with big deep breaths between them and dizzy spells from hyperventilating after 5 minutes. I have been painting a lot and making new friends here. The house I am living in is a community house for the area (uus maailm) and there is a nice garden and I have one friend who is about 3 years old next door ... a lovely girl called sissy who says hello out of her window as I am stretching in the garden in the sunny mornings. There are so many things I want to do before I leave next week. I want to paint the room even though we leave in a week... because I have a lovely idea of a big tree... and we have shows this weekend. Actually I have not been working for money hard at all.. more cycling around painting and experimenting new styles at home. An Australian teacher, who is the mother of one of the girls who live in the community house, loved my work and told me she will go home and ask her school to let me be their artist in residnce in Adalaide! WOOO HOOO!

Triin will stayin our room when I leave for London in a couple of weeks. I am learning estonian every day and Triin's wonderful trumpet teacher offered to teach me tuba and also asked me to play 2nd clarinet in the brass band... the current 2nd clarinet has leprocy which triin says is starting to 'go to his head'! The first clarinet player is blind... its a hard act to follow!

BELOW: some of the musicians in the Tallinn Youth Orchestra

It has been a wonderfully busy and exciting time. The local community were all working together to prepare for their 3rd annual summer street festival. I hung a selection of paintings i did this summer in the sitting room of the community house and they printed my picture below on a full page of the local newspaper with a little text about me.

I was very chuffed about that!

It is a picture of the sitting room of the community house with Bots playing chess against the house champ and Triin playing guitar in the background. However, yesterday the local poet got upset about something ... no-one is really at all sure... and he flipped and punched my painting cutting his hands on the glass - very melodramatic. I was rather taken aback and told him he would have to buy me a new frame... anyhow, I guess art does touch peoples emotions somehow. At least it was not a window cos although it is warm winter is never so far away in Estonia.

   The festival was due to take place on the weekend. On the saturday the sun was shining and I finished my dog mask just 10 minutes before the parade. It had taken me 2 days almost solid work and although I wanted to make an angry bull terrier mask it turned out looking more like a very cute and fluffy mongrol!
       The parade raised some eyebrows... bagpipes and whistles and trumpet and a big poster and a huge above head snake and some jugglers and unicycles and a dog on a bike (me). I had some close shaves because I could not see so much out of the dogs mouth so I almost cycled into a few lamp-posts and cars and did a lot of sniffing of other dogs, growling at annoying people who obstructed the parade and barked at the dolly in front of the news camera and she screamed and ran away! Here is a photo of me pumping up my tyre with my mask on!

       I could not believe how many people there were... it was really busy all along Luha street (that means meadow in estonian): market stalls, a band stage, a teepee with different attractions, children running everywhere and even organised street football matches (pretty wild... like gorilla football - not much skill just a lot of flying feet and one broken window). I tried to sell my art but without much success so I moved on to playing music and danced a little and people liked that.
       Erko was on the microphone telling people this and that. he is a really busy person when you hang out with him. At first he seemed so friendly but now he always has his head in some work and hardly has time to say hello! I still respect him a lot!
     The day ended with some fireshow outside the seltsimaja and Triin and me put on our Mushroom Buddy costumes and played music for the show, you can see us in the background here:

After that people jumping about to the dj outside and Triin and I went inside and played a little concert inside and a great Finnish pecussionist called Erik joined in which was great fun.

On sunday it rained very very hard... a nice change actually from the sunshine on saturday but unfortunately the market people all went home. The house was very busy with music and eating and cooking... Katarina worked like an ant in the kitchen making cakes and lots of nice girls were helping her. I lost several chess games against the Estonian youth champion who was very cool and went up and down the tables smoking a cigar and not saying too much. I spent a lot of the day drawing people at the festival ... the poetry reading, the market in the staircase of seltsimaja, the busy cafe and this portrait of Argo and a girl called Paike (sunshine).

Paike gave me a very nice back massage in exchange for her portrait. She was so good at it! I have been having back pains all week... I think i will stop drinking so much coffee and I really want to do more sport but infact I have been playing football almost everyday in the little fields infront of the Le Coq stadium just over the railway track. We have also been collecting lots of mushrooms and cooking and eating them - very yummy! So I have been very healthy... dont really know why my back is troubling me!

My friend Maarja and her circus buddy in the shisha tent at uus maailm festival 2009.

Maarja is one of my youngest heroes in this world!

Above: A very pretty French lady who was staying at Uus Maailm seltsimaja. I thought

I had done a really pretty picture of her but she was grossly insulted somehow!

I felt pretty bad... but I got to keep the picture! He he!

Above: A guy from Tartu and a Georgian girl who were selling clothes in the staircase of Uus Maailm seltsimaja during the festival weekend on the sunday when the rain was pouring down!Anyhow, soon there burst out an average sized Russian fight in the sitting room and fists were flying but Erko, who I had not seen all day, charged in from nowhere and bundled a couple of big drunk Russian guys out. There was a bit of an uncomfortable atmosphere after that... but a big lady walked in and hooted 'I am a professional singer at the opera, let me sing' and she hit the piano and really could play and then someone else took over and she was singing in the centre of the room holding an open umbrella in one hand and a glass of wine and microphone in the other. Very cool stuff!

The day after the festival Tom left for London getting a ride from a Belgian dude driving all the way home.

A few times every week Triin and I go to the Russian market and play music outside if it is sunny. We are pretty dinamic together and have a great time. The people there really appreciate it...we always get drunk Russians dancing and I got a free invitation to a theatre show tonight from someone who liked my street music - the theatre piece is called THE WOMAN AND THE CLARINET... two things I highly approve of! I have also been keeping up my chess playing but rarely win... I have been reading about soviet chess players and heard lots of good things about the Latvian Mikhael Tal who said: 'I drink, smoke, gamble and chase girls but postal chess is one vice I dont indulge!' The ladies in the market hear our music and give us reduced price water melons and grapes (for a couple of euros) along with lots of donations and smiles and we buy home grown pumpkins and tomatos and other tastey things from the babooshkas there. The old town is full of package tourists who just take photos and dont give us any money.

personally I think it would be better if they stayed at home... they dont see anything of the real town, like the market, just the spruced up medeval Disneyland which is the old Tallinn. Their business just blights the old town with boutiques and expensive restaurants and they cause a lot of pollution flying here and back for a few days. It would be much better for everyone if they went on a holiday in their own countries on bicycle. Here they only give local pick pockets (legal and illegal varieties of the species) a source of income and go away having seen a sham.

yesterday triin and i went to the russian market to play some music. It was a bit later than we normally play. The sunshine was cool and lovely and a gentle sea wind blew from the direction of the railway. We started playing and a drunk russian came and gave us 2 empty bottles of beer ... he took a turn of a lamp-post about 30 meters away and came back and took the two empty bottles again. he disappeared once again and then returned with two full bottles! OK... then he started dancing ... very slow and prancy style like a Viennese show-horse. We played a couple of russian numbers and he started crying... meanwhile several of his buddies had turned up... one guy who could speak but preffered to use his eyebrows and fingers to express himself. He was a small fellow with a face like a hairless rabbit and walking stick... a very elegant stick with some neon ribbons tied around its centre. He played air guitar on his stick to High Society and came very close and smiled very inoffensively. Another fellow was the journalist of the drunks... he was very curious about where we came from, what our instruments were called and posed his questions slowly and deliberately in clear russian. After we started playing he retreated to the bus stop opposite with his friend with no legs in the wheel chair and told him all about us. Another fellow in a track suit pulled up and saw us and started bellowing and howling and giving the thumps up and shaking his head... a little like the KILL THE NEGATIVE SHIT fellow from Karia but not so active or close up! Nice chap!

The first drunk, the fellow who had turned empty bottles of beer into full bottles, came up with tears still in his eyes and poured out a few coins and notes ... about 20 krone... not much but when you consider some of the spanish tourists give us 2 krone it is very generous! He cried a little more then returned with a big smile and left his leather bassball hat in my case. I tried to return it... but triin grabbed it.. 'No, I like it!' She looks like a black market Russian currency exchanger lady and when I told her she replied: 'That's exactly how I want to look!' Triin broke a string so it was time to go home. With all the money the drunks had given us we went and bought a rather expensive stereo from the big supermarket.. it cost around 40 euros but I was thinking that the drunks would have spent it on spirits or beer anyhow. They all asked when we were coming back... we have given up playing in the old town except in bars in the evenings. I look forward to playing again in the Russian Market!

Anyhow, last night I had a lovely dream that my sister Klara walked into the room and said "JIMMY!" and jumped on my back in a big cuddle ... a lot like my friend next door Sissy does when she sees me! She is also (unbeknown to her) my Estonian teacher... I went to the university basic estonian course on the sly but I found it was already too easy for me so I am continuing my studies at home reading Pippi Langschtocken, my 'Estonian for beginners' book, street signs and chatting to Sissi. The fact that I am a bit crazy looking, that I dont speak her language very well, that I am big and hairy and make a lot of noise unlike Estonians does not scare her at all, anyhow, she has got purple, black and blond hair and is often really dirty from playing in the mud and often collects muddy stones and trash (so we have that in common!) She is very bright and school does not start in Estonia until 5 years old so she spends a lot of her time hanging out here and does not break things or play computer games like the boys do. No-one here seems to worry about their kids running around and they are much more smart that home bound kids in the west.

Nevertheless, soon I will have to go home. I want to go over land through Poland rather than take a boat to Germany ... but now I have a huge tuba to carry... we shall see how it works out. Either way.. land or sea I am sure it will be real fun! I will head for Berlin... and then through Belgium and hop over to London on Eurostar.
I have been developing my own confused little theory about energy which does not really make any sense unless you already understand what I am trying to say. Basically the theory helps explain to me how somethings can seem upsetting or scary to some people and not bother others, because people give energy to things they think about... I guess it means that even a death of someone can become very meaningless or of little significance if they have not attached any emotional energy to that person. It does not proove anything and in fact it confuses me not a little but it felt remarkable when I first thought of it! I will move on...

Yesterday I tried to go to the history museum but stopped by the beach and thought I would sit down a bit, then I thought it would be nice to lie in the sun and then I thought I would close my eyes and soon enough I was asleep in the cool sun with the seagulls and swans perched on rocks in the waveless blue bay.

I went to acrobatics yesterday and felt pretty old and unflexible and weak. I wished i had started acrobatic earlier...18 or something! I feel like I am running to stay still now! I came back with Triin and was feeling tired but we went to a young musicians party. I was thinking about writing a song or rap about all the things I wish I had not done and things I had done and then things I feel I have to do now and things I want to do before i get much older. Something like this:

When i was young I wish I had strutted about
When I was young I wish I had not studied so much and had more fun
When I was young I wish I had kissed more girls and not been so scared of God
When I was young I wish I had been less serious
When I was young I wish i had grown my hair long

Now I am middle aged I can't strutt without looking silly
Now I am middle aged my hair does not grow long, only on my toes!
Now I am middle aged I have no respect for gods or icons and have lost contact with the beliefs of my youth which I detest not a little now
Now I am middle aged not many girls are too interested in kissing me, only the ugly ones.

But before I get much older I want to

Kiss all the less ugly ugly-girls

Grow a big beard which I can hide behind when the police come looking for me

Just enjoy myself like I was a kid and

Learn to do a backflip while playing ukulele

It is a crime to be indoors on a day like this...so i will stop breaking the law!

The Tuba Lesson - Tallinn September 2009

2009-09-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

The leader of the blind orchestra of Tallinn heard me play some clarinet and when I told him I was interested in learning tuba he agreed to give me some introductory lessons. He lives in Uus Maailm which translates as New World - a very intergalatic title for a quite regular residential district of Tallinn, a little outside the medeival city walls of the old town. In times of yore a inn stood with the exotic name of America. Slowly over the years as it became safe to live outside the city walls houses were built on the fields and bogs and ponds around the inn and the suburb of Tallinn was named New World after that inn. Now it is a mixture of Estonian decaying wooden two story flats and Soviet apartments. The older Estonian homes are usually painted a dull yellow or a snotty green with a great deal of peeled paint and cranky rooves and surrounded by spacious gardens and some wicked wicket fences. The soviet buildings are generally five or six story concrete erections in different shades of grey with lush green community lawns outside which belong to everyone in the house and they probably dont talk to each other so much so no-one touches it except the official town gardeners who mow the lawn and chop the branches off obstructive trees. These gardens lack the person touch of the private gardens. I strolled down Koidu (sunrise) street, turned right at Videviku (twilight) street and then along Luha (meadow) street past a schoolyard. Kids were rushing around screaming and jumping or hanging on climbing frames like monkeys in jackets. The last house on the Luha was an old two story custard yellow number, the high gate was unlocked and opening it reveiled a long low garage to the left of a beautiful garden full of blooming flowers and fruit trees. A few steps led up to the house door on the right which was also unlocked so I went in and found myself in a little corridor with a staircase going up and an old daguerotype of a couple in their old age snarling at the camera like two trapped wolves in lace. I heard the sound of a trumpet behind the door so I rang the bell and waited. After no reaction I rang it again and once more a little later. I heard feet approaching and the door opened and the old fellow was in the doorway and beckoned me in. I offered my hand and he took it with a look of mild surprise and shook it out of politeness. I guess it was a bit foreign for him. He loped down a long low corridor like a mole and I followed him. The walls on both sides were covered with posters for different orchestral shows: a performance in 1997 with the blind orchestra - I recognised a few characters but none of them seemed to have aged much over the last 12 years. Another poster from 1997 showed a larger orchestra in more modish costumes sporting very Soviet Eastern European costumes. The ladies had large hairdos like thatched blond heads and I noticed several of the women were very slim and pale and had mouse-like timid expressions. Some Soviet cartoons showed jolly musicians prancing about with their horns and brass and an other showed a collection of caricature heads of composers, conductors, sopranos and other musical maestros from back in the day with my host somewhere there among them.
At the end of the corridor a little bench showed where my shoes had to be removed and he invited me to put on a pair of felt house slippers. His previous student was playing American Spirituals from a Russian music book and he motioned me to sit on the Russian style sofa-bed then pulled his large body over to the piano and started playing the backing. I had heard them all before: 'Nobody knows the trouble I've seen', 'Hello Dolly' and 'Swing low sweet chariot' but it was strange to hear that soulful music played from a book. I sat on the sofa and looked around. The piano had a few squeaky notes where the key seemed not to be hitting a string but a rusty metal matrass or a broken gong across the street. The teacher squeaked and groaned out to express how the song should be played and would yell over the music with canon-like lungs commands that I could not understand but seemed to register with the pupil who played on unperturbed. I inspected the cushion next to me which had a tasteful old print of some town in Germany with a modern building in the centre and some forests and churches and old houses on the sides. The other cushions had Estonian patterns on them. I turned my attention to the book shelf and found a book by Billy Graham in Estonian which I took down to copy the Durer-like Apocolyptic print on the cover. I copied the face of the manic horse of some deathly old man while the lesson came to an end. After the pupil had played the last piece the teacher waved his hands and she went to sit by the table in front of a little bowel of sweets and eat them as he took a tuba out from behind a curtain near the piano where a harem of brass instruments were hanging on nails, sitting on the floor or lying on shelves. He showed me two tubas and said that one was deeper and heavier than the other but he only had a mouthpiece for the lighter specimen, the Eb tuba and since that was what the Dixieland band of St Petersberg had and it looked a lot lighter than the other one it was decided I would learn that (it has three keys with trumpet fingering unlike the 4 keyed Bb tuba I think he said). The young girl translated into English between mouth-fulls of sweets what his gestures and my poor Estonian did not gather.

A drawing Triin did of me during my first tuba lesson

with Esimene Tund written in the top left (Estonian for 'first lesson')

By the end of the class I managed to play the Eb scale but I think I learned much more Estonian than tuba. He told me he could not lend me an instrument to practice on but maybe he had one at the blind orchestra practice room which I could borrow. We got up to leave but he struggled over to a doorway and came back with a plastic bag. The girl told me we were going to his garden to collect plums from his tree. I got outside and started filling the bag with windfallen purple plums but he told me not to bother until he had shook the tree. He trundled over to the trunk and held it with his sausage fingered grip and shook it for a few seconds and ripe plums fell like spilled buttons from on high. I gathered the fruit from between the flower beds while he paced over to the apple tree and came back like tortoise a few minutes later with his hands full of small pale apples with black spots and worm-nibbles. He pulled a few more out of his deep trouser pockets and put them with the plums in our plastic bag. I thanked him and shook his hand at the gate which seemed to surprise him again. The gate shut behind me as I strolled back down Luha and past the school yard which was now empty of children.

PAINTINGS FROM ESTONIA summer 2009

2009-08-13T06:24:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the paintings I did during summer 2009 while I was staying in Estonia

Above: from left to right, Sami from Finland and Triin on piano and Sissi

eating water melon painted in the dining room of Uus Maailm Seltsimaja.

Above: a water colour painting of my favourite church in old Tallinn, St Olav's,

which has a viewing balcony where I sketched the next picture.

Below: detail of the same picture showing the churches and castle towers of old Tallinn. The half obscured spire to the left is St Nicholas, the Russian authodox cathedral is in the centre and on the far right with the black spire is the Cathedral (Domkirk).

Above: an old dude on the train heading west from Tallinn. The whole 40 minute journey he was dipping into a packet of small skotch eggs and gobbled them down with his few teeth. Watercolour and pencil.

A not very flattering portrait of Maria, my pregnant friend in Tallinn.

She is actually a really soft and kind and amazingly imaginative lady.

Triin's wonderful trumpet teacher offered to teach me tuba and also asked me to play 2nd clarinet in the brass band... the current 2nd clarinet has leprocy which triin says is starting to 'go to his head'! The first clarinet player is blind... its a hard act to follow!

BELOW: some of the musicians in the Tallinn Youth Orchestra

This is a picture of the trees outside Triin's family home in Mustamae in the late summer sunset.

I was very chuffed about that!

It is a picture of the sitting room of the community house with Bots playing chess against the house champ and Triin playing guitar in the background.

Mushrooms - a water colour still life from a selection of forest mushrooms we found, most of which we eat after they had been painted.

I spent a lot of the day drawing people at the festival ... the poetry reading, the market in the staircase of seltsimaja, the busy cafe and this portrait of Argo and a girl called Paike (sunshine).

Paike gave me a very nice back massage in exchange for her portrait. She was so good at it!

Photo from the belly of the Suur Toll ice-breaker ship in the Tallinn navel museum.

Triin my beautiful girlfriend playing beautiful trumpet music for a soundtrack of a movie her friend Jan Tati made.

Above and below: Satj, an English traveller and street musician hanging out in Tallinn.

Artwork from Finland Spring and Summer 2009

2009-05-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

I spent much of the late spring and summer of 2009 in Finland playing gigs. I also spent a lot of free time painting, concentrating on developing my water colour skills.

Here are some samples of my work

I hope you like them and Iwould appreciate any comments or surgibstons.

Thanks very much dude

JIMBINO VEGAN

I arrived in Tampere, the second biggest city in Finland after Helsinki located in the centre of Finland, in mid April to play music at a swing dance weekened of workshops. I ended up staying a week after the festival out and about with my sketch pad. The days were very bright and sunny and although the snow was melting it could still be bitterly cold, especially when the wind blew. The painting above was done on a very very cold windy day on a golf course. I was too cold to see straight by the end... excuses, excuses!!!

Boats by the frozen lake. Simplicity and small good quality paper seemed to be the key to getting results with watercolours...at least for me!

Aleksis's dad's sauna in the summer house near Nokia. View down on to the jetty where the night before we had been jumping into the freezing water after roasting in the sauna.

Hirvi Katu (moose street) community arts centre front porch in Pispalla, near Tampere. My friends work there and I sat in the porch as the cold sun set trying my first watercolour interior!

A bad result - I blame this on the cold but also a bit ambitious with all those trees behind the lovely grey rocks.

This sketch is from Tampere Dom - a beautiful cathedral built in 1907 which feels more artistic and cosy than spiritual.. at least to me but it is a very personal thing. It is famous for its frescos painted by the well-known symbolist artist Hugo Simburg.

Here are Annie, Aleksis and Rikkaa - three members of the Swing Team in Tampere that invited Triin and me over to play music for their Easter weekend workshop!

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After Tampere I went on a short tour of Russia and Ukraine (see other blog) and returned to Finland again in early June for more concerts with Too Dumb To Die. We cycled from Helsinki to Tampere and then took the train all the way up north to Kemi (near the artic circle) and cycled much of the way south along the Coast of Bothnia staying for a few days with our friend Ula Maja in Oulu.

My MAIN MAN ROBY WAN reading Carlos Castanera in the garden in Tampere

Ships in Oulu

ABOVE: Two picture of my wonderful friend Ula-Maja... our hostess in Oulu and a great supporter of Too Dumb to Die. She hosted all 8 of us in her one room flat -lucky there was a park outside! The picture on the left shows her reading the paper in the kichen and on the right she is on her balcony in Oulu (in a block of flats designed by Alvar Aalto the famous Finnish modernist architect) chatting to her lovely neighbour. There was a very touching story about her neighbour that reminded me what music can do for people: she had not left her home for anything other than chores since her husband had died exactly a year before. She was so intrigued by all our practicing that she came in to town to see us play and danced... and was so delighted with us that she was constantly offering us bread and cheese or the use of her shower if we had a queue in Ula-Maja's flat!

Above: Triin in Oulu infront of the paper mill.

Above: Rowing boat in Raahe

ABOVE: The midnight sun... looking north at 2.30 am in Raahe in July

This pencil sketch below shows how I painted the above picture. I had to cover myself in a mosquito net to avoid being eaten alive.

After reaching Vasa mostly by bike, we jumped a stretch of coast on the bus to arrive in time to meet the other members of Too Dumb To Die in Turku (Finland's oldest city on the South Western coast). From there we set off on our bikes through the Aland archipeligo which are thousands of beautiful islands scattered almost all the wasy between Finland and Sweeden. Bikes are free of cost of mostly all of the many ferries between the islands and there are not many cars and many beautiful birds nesting. The scenery was the most lovely I have yet seen in Finland. I had a really spendid time and tried to catch some sights with my brush.

Cathedral in Turku (oldest church in Finland but many times burnt down)

ABOVE AND BELOW: Churches on Aland islands

Triin drinking coffee in a cafe in Aland islands

From Aland I took a ferry over to Stockholm for Herrang Swing festival and from there took a boat back to Estonia to prepare for my exhibition in Mustio (a small village with a historical manor house on the Kings Road connecting Turku with Helsinki). Our wonderful friend Katja bent over backwards to help me with the exhibition - many many thanks to her! I exhibited paintings I had made over the summer (many of these shown on this blog) and sold a couple and received a lot of encouragement and congratulations. I stayed around in Mustio for 2 weeks after the vernissage painting and relaxing in the lovely countryside.

Me dancing ontop of the gallery in Mustio Finland where my
exhibition took place (the building is actually a wooden built
folly on top of a hill painted to look like a stone castle!)

Above: Gazebo in Mustio with bridge in background

Triin in the same Gazebo at dusk

Above: Full moon over a misty field outside Katja

Yuhola's home in Mustio/Svaro in SW Finland

Above:Bridge and Gazebo in Mustio Manor

Lillies in Mustio at evening (trying hard to master the art

of water colour with an oriental touch)

A young Finnish boy and girl in the train in Helsinki. There are many death metal fanatics and many young people look very pale and wan and wear black clothes.
Tampere Dom

Friends in the Swing team Tampere

Travels in Ukraine, Russia and Byelorus in May 2009

2009-05-11T04:26:00.000-07:00

Babooskas selling vegetables on the underpass steps in Kiev

May in Ukraine means the arrival of spring with summer on its heels. The warm sun puts on a mini skirt and the boys take off their shirts to catch her attention. Her flying blond plaits tickle their tough Slavic tyre slapping chests. Meanwhile on the streets of Kiev the sunshine finds your author chilling with Vanya, my dancing-clown host.

Triin in Belorus. Eating spagetti in a bar in Minsk

I came to Kiev for a swing festival with Triin via Belorus. Triin had to leave straight after the festival for school but I stayed to look around. I still haven't really seen much of the old city and haven't even stepped into a single museum yet! I seem to have spent most of my days here relaxing in the park, sketching and playing music, cycling for hours along bumpy tracks, getting lost among dachas and dragging by bike over train tracks and along roads on the map that turn out in reality to resemble an overgrown goat path through abandoned industrial complexes. In one such spot I felt like I was the last man alive cycling through the destroyed earth on his trusty mountain-bike. In the balmy evenings I often find myself partying at someone's house playing guitar and singing Russian songs with heavy drinking strangers in someones megalithic ruined apartment block kitchen. So many magical moments here! Urban beauty in its most extreme. Last night I took a girl home on the bike and on the way back I stopped next to a wooden giraffe and elephant play area. The street lights don't work and the full moon was shining yellow between the giant robotic gray monster housing estates. In the darkness I could hear a small group of friends quietly talking by a bench across the green space about 40 meters away. They laughed and clinked bottles. The big road behind me was empty of cars - as if they had all tucked up to sleep in the countless pot-holes and frogs could be heard croaking busily from some swamp between the appartment blocks. In the 10 story block of flats standing infront of me like a huge chunk of Mego-Lego most of the lights were off but from one window I could see silhouettes of arms waving with bottles in their hands and hear several voices singing and a guitar somewhere behind it all. In the quiet night I could make out the tone of the voices and the occational familiar russian word. The sky was a deep night-time blue and small shreds of dark grey cloud slid along between the concrete housing estates while the big round orange moon bobbled slowly over the factory chimneys. Far away a dog started going berserk and the woofing spread like sound-dominoes until soon there was a red-army choir of barking-mad street and yard dogs yapping and howling in the distance. It slowly died down and one little pug was left wimpering like a kettle coming off steam.

Two days ago I was strolling through the main square on friday night with Vanya and Nastya and some other Petersburgians after seeing a puppet show in Ukrainian - I went asleep for the whole show but it was fun. There was a small band of musicians playing klezma and balkan music - clarinet, accordian, guitar and drums - wow the clarinetist was super hot - a pug-nosed Russian proffessional with more slick licks than a desert weasil in a leapard skin waste-coat! I danced with a drunk blond fan who spun so much it made me feel as drunk looking at her as she probably was being her. I started jumping around on my hands to kick off the dizziness of looking at the blond spinning top and that over, I played a bit of clarinet with the band but they did not really need me what with maestro-vsky on clarinet. I think Vanya did not really want me to hang out with the musicians but before he dragged me off they managed to invite me to some gallery where to my understanding there would be some chilling taking place a little later. Vanya and I went to fetch the car near some metro station.

Musician friends in Hydropark in Kiev

Metro in Kiev

On the train a drunk soldier started making violent expressions of friendship for me ... mixed with not very vague warnings not to mess with him which included several not very feint punches to my vital organs in a friendly military manner and a display of his military record including several mean photos of him scowling with guns in his hands like Rambo on a bad morning full of no-coffee. Most of the guys have short hair cuts and look like characters out of Starship Enterprise in their casual wear - caucasian, christian, marrying and drinking god fearing and devil loving guys. He then insisted we come and drink beer with him. We protested ... in the future I won't bother - best to go along with such drunks and then hook them up with some other alcoholics to kiss or fight with - usually both. We managed to bind him into a life long relationship with some hag with a handbag outside a late night off licence and as he aggressively instructed her about the wonders of fishing we crept off the scene through the dead market ... I bought my own beer after refusing 100 offers from the fishing fanatic soldier and could have passed for a local as I held it aloft while Vanya and I strolled along the railway tracks to his car chatting in Russian - he is great at explaining russian phrases to me and we help each other through linguistic labyrinths with lots of laughs. When the night gets really late he sometimes starts talking to me about girls but he does not drink so he is much easier to communicate on a equal basis than many locals!

Anyhow, we eventually made it to the car and we decided not to have the early night we had planned but to rush off to the musicians party at the gallery. Half an hour later, across town in the back of some courtyard people were hanging out in front of a garage and in the yard weird art pieces were scattered randomly around under the tree and on the old brick wall - we rang the bike bell on the garage door and a manic blond violently friendly artist opened the door. He started throwing spanners around the small garage, kicking a chain saw to start and several times almost fell into the man hole leading to the basement while his buddies quietly painted a huge wheely bin in gold leaf. The insides of the wheelie bin had already been lined with bath tiles and a plug and two big silver bath taps stood at the top with the attachment for the piping. From the velvet tassles and botnots dangling on the golden lid to the shiny silver wheels under the beasts belly it looked all in all like a jolly jazzy bathtub! However apart from throwing spanners the artist seemed to do very little work - in between fake artistique tantrums he crashed around the room chattering and jabbering and hitting people in a friendly way with the free hand that was not holding a bottle of beer by the neck which spluttered and foamed at the mouth like a rabid puppy. I did not really enjoy his violent friendliness but he insisted I came back the next night for a big party - quite early for a party I thought but apparently they wanted me to do a sound check??? Vanya did not like the place much and we drove home and slept like pancakes on the mantlepiece!

I arrived around 11pm and the party seemed to be getting quite warm. A manic violinist was playing with the wicked russian clarinet player and the dude on accordian and the tough blond artist appeared in a pink blazer and hit me a few more times before introducing me as Johney to everyone and looking for weed for me to smoke out of some dirty old bottle. I let him go off alone on his search and he came back a little less violent and quite smoked out after fifteen minutes of me not being slapped by anyone. If he had not vanished i may have had to leave but by that time i had met a few cool cats. Infact in Ukraine in general i have witnessed quite a lot of slapping and violence - seems quite acceptable to a degree. At its peak the gallery party was a bit like a saloon fight in a wild western, one girl was slapping the artist repeatedly while he tried to do some kind of drunk hippo dance with her, two others were playing tennis with the wheely bin while the chubby hairy little sozzled man stood grinning as he stood half naked in the empty bath-bin piece of art with his paws perched on the golden rim like a doped hampster in a bowel of nothing. Others were jumping on each other and rolling on the carpet and a boggled eyed witness sat with his knees akimbo like a babe rolling his eyes at the scene infront of him as his head and boddy boobed around like a buoy in the harbour. The various effects of alcohol were very clearly on display... I felt like I was in the alcohol equivalent of Reefer Madness - the 1940s US properganda short movie about smoking marajuana where some youths at a party start smoking and seconds later a young lady is visciously kissing a pianist who is crashing at the piano while another woman laughs manicly as a guy chops at some gent sitting on the couch with an antique sword. Check 'reefer madness' on youtube to see the funny 1 minutes video!

Anyhow, this was not the first time I had witnessed the violent effects of ahcohol in Ukraine ... earlier that evening i had tried to play some music in the subway but a drunk invalid from Chernobyl started making friends with me sitting by my side and he got into a fight with a small ragged drunk blond who wanted to take my phone number for some reason i did not quite get - something to do with irish music and bells??? Just a few minutes earlier a friendly couple had invited me for a beer and I said OK but i just wanted to play music and not really chat to anyone. It all got a bit wierd and I found myself between the invalid waving his crutch to hit the small rag-doll woman while she stood there screaming at him that she was a journalist and the friendly couple came back with two beers for me tried to get me to carry on playing and encouraged me to play on and the huge security guard walked up and watched it all like he was a big well fed tree or content stone lazing in the sunshine.

So it was not totally unintentioally that I arrived at the artists party only 5 instead of 6 hours late the next night. After much dancing including me walking on my hands around a drunk Ukrainian guy lying on the ground and jabbering in Spanish mixed with slow lines of Ukrainian poety I found I was a little tired and not looking forward much to the long cycle ride back to Vanya's place - probably about one hour across town and over the very very wide river Dnipr - it was already 4ish. When the accordian player invited me to stay at his place and give me a ride in his car I accepted and quite soon we had the bike strapped to the roof of his car and we were bouncing along the empty streets in a car with two twin girls, the accordianist and the Gogol look alike violinist whose eyebrows kept dancing to some mental melodies going on his skull-box. Sergei the driver stopped in Uprising Square and we went to eat at a 24 hour sandwich bar called Miiisterr Snyeek ('mister snack' pronounced in the local manner) and I hosted a small conference for the non-plused waiters about what animal products were and eventually got a plate with a sliced tomato and some bread and mustard and only a small discreet sausage hanging out on the side of the plate like the local police smoking in dark corners! Not too bad going considering everything. I posed outside with a gang of street cleaners and then Sergei and I played some music for them and they told us to shut up and then they all piled into the back of their truck and drove off up the hill. We drove to Sergei the accodianists place and I was given a really cool bed and went to sleep as the sun was rising. In the morning i found that the twin sister of Sergeis girlfriend had slept on the kitchen floor but she said she liked it there. I was too tired to realise the night before that i was doing her out of a bed but I soon found that part of the deal of staying the night was that I would pose for a portrait which was fine by me. So after a big breakfast the two sisters started painting me in oils. I sat in the corner looking at the clouds and chatting nonsense for what seemed like a month. It was about 4 hours and it was 6ish when it finished - about four hours of solid painting and posing from 1.30 in the afternoon with a small tea break inbetween. Anyhow it gave me lots of time to contemplate the two twins - quite an interesting couple.

Julia and Tihon in their dacha home near Moscow

My beautiful friend Zhehia in St Petersburg!

Ira and Lena, Ukrainian sisters painting me in Kiev
(gee, I had to sit still for FOUR hours)

Ira was a fierce blond with blue eyes and a chisled wolf like expression on her face. She painted a fantastic portrait of me looking like che guevara and really found the raw wild man in me - very soviet style portrait - all I lacked was a pickaxe and a blood crimson sunset bleeding across the sky! She was the girl who was slapping guys at the party the night before and had become almost viscious when one goofy tall dude told her he would not give her a cigarette because it would harm her children - he told her later that it was a joke and he simply did not have any more but by then one look at her and inside her eyes you could see her brain hacking him into little pieces and feeding him to famished yellow eyed featherless zombi chickens foaming with hunger through their twisted beaks. I did a one minute sketch of her without looking at the paper in 'mr snack' as I waited for my 'sliced-tomato-with-chunk-of-bread' salad and she told me it was not a picture and I was careless and not an artist. Alright, alright, alright!!! She will probably mellow out on me and be a bit more fun after a while when she realises I am not trying to drag her off to some Tartar camp to make her carry stones to Constantinople. Anyhow her sister Lena was very very different, she seemed very much in awe of her strong willed sister and told me her tough exterior hid a very very gentle heart - well it certainly did a good job hiding any heart at all gentle or not and I almost got punched in the mosh by deep down lilly-hearted sister Ira for putting breath to my comments. Lena seemed much younger although they were born in the same hour. She was dark haired and soft spoken and hazel eyed and more rounded and soft. She drew a picture of me looking like a big hairy baby beneith a fresh blue sky - I think my mum will really like it. As they painted we told fairy tales in russian and english - I didn't get what the hell they were talking about but I think it was some kind of wood forest zombies in the carpathian mountains and an ugly old nice lady who turned into a tree in the rain. They then started singing and both had very very beautiful voices - Ira sang some Billy Holiday with a voice that could chop your winters supply of wood with and Lena sang several ukrainian folk songs with glistening tears in the corner of her eyes and a quite mesmerising effect. They seemed to turn the clouds into imaginary animals and make you want to yearn for deeper sadness so you could float away on a flood of tears. They both laughed when I sang a few of my songs ... they especially liked my song 'fruit salad blues' and when I told them it was a sad song about bananas and they said it sounded like everyother song I sang and concluded that all my songs were sad songs about bananas! I guess they are right in a way...??

I cycled Lena into town on my bike and stopped by a woman selling kvass from a big yellow barrel shaped trailer and Lena carried my cup of kvass while I chugged along crinkled concrete pavements and across manic motorways. We chilled out in the park together with Sergei who was playing in a beach cafe with Mitchos the clarinet lord! After a while we went to meet up with Vanya and we he drove us home where we cooked a big meal with lots of home made fresh delicious vegetables. I cycled Lena home and sat looking at the night sky with her on a bench outside her apartment block. She is very attractive and quite a catch for any guy so I felt quite pleased with myself by not taking advantage of the situation and trying anything on. I came home feeling like I had done a great noble public act of fidelty to Triin who I have been getting along very well with of late. In all truth I do really feel jolly lucky being with one of the most gifted and cheerfully tough girls I have ever met. However, when I came home and Vanya started telling me that Lena obviously liked me and how he thought flirting and kissing and so forth would do no harm to my relationship with Triin, my virtuous mood seemed to crumble into a feeling of self-chastisment for lacking of a certain 'carpe diem' attitude to events. I guess I was just tired and I slowly gave up saying 'Da Da Da' to his interesting analysis of relationships and trickled into dream land.
I guess on this note I may as well make a few observations about relationships in general. Having not been with Triin for several months and haven given up during that time on a long distance fidel commitment I thought that since we did not know how long we would be back together we might as well not loose any chances of love that may present themselves to either of us. What I guess is called an open relationship in 'ze vestern hemispheeere'! But when you have grown so familiar to someone after many taxing adventures and good and bad times interest in others may hotten the blood but seems quite superficial. There is little point in moving flats just for the new oven, if you follow me! And these romantic efforts can be dissapointing to me and despite Triin's pride in her unshakeability, not very inspiring for her and although perhaps masicistically I hope she will have a fling just to see how I react, my record is not so good in such matters. I dont know if it is less painful to keep these things quiet or to talk it over like adults but it is very hard to resist telling the person closest to you about things that you feel strongly so we have been talking about it and despite my efforts I dont think Triin will ever loose some of that Estonian verbal reserve - which on the face of it is no great compliment but if you have read this far, you will probably be starting to appreciate it and wish I had it in larger doses. Basically the whole thing does not make relationships much easier but I guess it does make them more flexible and relaxed and by telling the heart not to get jealous you can rein in the feeling before it sweeps you away. The most important thing in a relationship is to love deeply and honestly and since no deep honest love is conventional don't let conventions tie it down.

However on the conservative side of the coin it feels like finally this year, after ten years of boys schooling and living in a household full of brothers, eventually I am finally making friends with girls in a normal buddy way. Annie from Finland and Gesina and Sara from Germany are good examples - people I feel so comfortable and open with and love in a way I love my mates Bots or Talis or Channing. I think in some ways I have really come to appreciate that side of women and changed my behaviour in a way that makes it more easy to get there ... of course they are wonderful and very special girls too! And as I said before at the moment after a lot of fun in Finland and Kiev swing camps I have a very high regard for Triin - a record high I guess! She gave Vanya some delicious tea and gave me a big bag of dried fruit before she left and I have been swimming in the sweet aroma of the tea ever since. I tell locals here who ask where I am from that I live in Tallinn so they dont look at me like a total wierdo or try to rip me off. I met a woman in the market selling childrens books and told her I was from Estonia and she came to life chatting to me about when she lived there for 2 years in her youth at the military camp in Paldisky - she only knew a couple of words in Estonian so my cover was pretty safe! It felt good to make the old bird selling bits and pieces of junk for pennies smile and also made me feel close to Triin. I sneakily bought a childrens book and soviet badge off her so the woman in the next booth who I had bargained down for the CCCP hammer and sickle red boxer shorts for my brother Henry's birthday would not notice that I did actually have the right price for her overpriced boxer shorts.
OK not the best ending as endings go but it will do.
Hammer and sickle boxer shorts.
Lots of love
jimbino
xxxxxx

Ukrainian girl called Tanya making a garland near Pushkin, a town near St Petersburg

Kiev Lavrio, view from the hillside looking West

Street musician in St Petersburg

Evgenia, a swing dancer from Moscow at the Kiev swinglandia dance camp

Babooshkas in Kiev working out how to use their mobile phones

ST PETERSBURG

Nastya from St Petersburg

Church in Zagorsk, an ancient medival city famous for its giant stone crosses in North Western Russia, very close to the Estonian border. The wind was blowing very hard and the big clouds were sailing past with their cold black shadows rippling over the green rolling fields.

MY PAINTINGS OF NEW ORLEANS

2009-04-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

ABOVE: Loose Marbles Jazz Band in Fritzels bar
While in New Orleans I tried to draw as much as I could. Unfortunately and typically -during the exciting moments most deserving to be recorded in paint, I was having too much fun to concentrate. I did a couple of pictures from memory which I will post as soon as they are finished. I am coming to the opinion that drawing from life is all very good exercise but the GREATEST art must be done from memory or somewhere deeper - reverse memory - visions of the future or the past but NOT from life somehow. Anyhow, here are several pictures that were all drawn from life and painted from memory of friends, acquaintances and places in New Orleans during my month long stay there.

Above: Some great friends and great musicians including Mat on guitar and

Joe Powers on piano !

Above: SECOND LINING - for more info on this New Orleans beautiful weekly phenomenon check out my chapter on SECOND LINES on this site!

Shanty is a good old friend of mine who I met in croatia on out cycles in the summer of 2004 I think. He is a remarkable handyman and very caring friend always ready to help others. In fact he is called Shanty after the trailer on his bike where anyone would drop anything they did not want to carry. He was so fast he needed to be slowed down so he carried everyones things. His trailer was called shanty town because that is what it looked like and he was called shanty after his trailer! HO ho ho!
Above he is having a hair cut from another even older and very dear friend Gesina from Germany. She and I lived in the same house in the winter of 2003 in Barcelona. She is perhaps the most positive and loving person I know - I feel like she is a really special friend. Here she is giving Shanty a haircut. What with us both being Europeans I felt somehow even closer to her in New Orleans! They are doing the operation outside the hut on Rosie Lee lane at the back of Miss Jane's home where Shanty and I were staying. Below is Shanty playing clarinet:

Dizzy a Turkish born washboard player who had lived last few years in New York. Charming girl and always very elegantly dressed and also a fantastic musician - very sensitive and always jumping around with the music.

Willy is a very Talented song writer and guitarist. Very easy to get along with - modest and touching. He is humble which is remarkable considering the beauty of his songs. I have come to the conclusion that in so far as song writing is concerned - it is perhaps the most unjust talent - those who write the worst songs can get very far while people who spill their soul into words are too deep or meaningful or write too powerful music for others to appreciate. Or maybe it is just all taste and bad taste. In my opinion if you dont like the music people like Willy write then you are a moron or a Philestine or both but probably worse!

Lester and a girl whose name i forgot - posing in a courtyard with an umbrella during the intermittant sweaty menacing rain before the storm came. Lester was a neighbour of Miss Jane's and had been brought up as an acrobat and figure skater as a child. He could still do a back-flip before breakfast with a work belt on but all I ever saw him doing was smoking, drinking and chilling out. Very fun and engaging man - very agreeable, talented and kind.

Hassan - fantastic local singer and pianist! Very good company and sly chess player! Great fun to hang out with!

Emily in bed - she kindly let me stay in her flat when there was no room at Miss Jane's - although some nights she was so tired from work that she would be asleep when i arrived and asleep when i left and would not even know i had been there. I made this picture as a thankyou present for her hospitality and her deep kindness and generoscity of time in giving me private swing dance tuition.

Downtown New Orleans - The town became rich in the 80s when oil was found in the gulf but then bust and many of the big office blocks down town are empty and rotting. This is a typical street scene in the Central Business District (CBD for short). Empty bare streets with big shadows and strong sunlight and often a solid wind coming off the Mississippi and mowing between the skeletonal office blocks and rattling the empty can or bottle across the silent streets.

I have forgotton this girl's name - i saw her at the 2nd Line and smiled but we met next day at a party where i did painting of her which she was very sympathetic about - i am glad to say it looks much prettier and more like her in colour than the original in black and white - i hope she gets to see this - please tell me if you know her name!

Brett - more commonly known as Chigago - you have never seen a man who enjoys a cigarette and glass of beer as much as this cat - and as for his playing - a truly catholic repertoir of music from Debussy and Rachmaninov to Jelly Roll and Scott Joplin and lots of pop and original compositions too. A real hero on the piano and a truly beautiful cat with so much talent he glows!

Chance the dance teacher - very slick Lindihop dancer and devoted teacher and very genuine nice fella. He has established lindihop classes in New orleans and is also a slick tap dancer who can be often seen strutting for the Loose Marbles on Royal Street.

A well dressed Spanish girl I met on the street and painted.

NEW ORLEANS - INDIANS

2009-04-02T21:10:00.002-07:00

MARDI GRAS INDIANS

The tradition of Mardi Gras Indians goes back to the stories of Native American Indians who looked after African run-away slaves and accepted them as FELLOW HUMANS. Native Americans had many faults like everyone but they had no concept of one human being being another's material property! These run-away slaves intermarried with the indiginous people's and there are a few cases of black men become Chiefs of Tribes and trying to free other slaves. There is very little Indian blood left in Louisiana but the memories live on!

Each parish chooses their own chief and he assembles a tribe including spy boy, second in command, indian princess, wild men and sometimes many more but those are the essentials. Each one has their job - the Spyboy has to run ahead and keep the chief informed about other Indian tribes in the vicinity.

A Wildman

The Wildman or Wildmen watch his back and are permanently guarding the Chief. They often dress in bone costumes - voodoo style - and are often the only tribe members who are white - maybe because their faces are usually covered by masks!

Pierre as Wildman for Keito's tribe on St Joseph's night parade - which ended in a bit of a shoot out down town.

The Chief is always addressed Chief - even during everyday situations - and he remains chief sometimes for years until someone else is chosen to take over. He carries a decorated oversize rifle usually with a name written with crepe-like-ribbons on its side. He brandishes this and leads his musicians about who follow singing his praises and beating tambourines and drums until the time (I never saw) when he crosses another Indian chief and they face each other off with battles of the wits - exchanging insults, friendly or viscous.

Keito - our local chief with Forest - my neighbour - the dude with the beard holding the pole

Local street cleaners, delivery men, housewives, carpenters, mechanics turn into amazingly dressed Native Americans for the day. They are normal people who transform into beautiful heros and the legends of the community giving pride to their followers and making their life bigger than real life. These are normal people who bust a gut all year to get their new costume together and then live it to the max. NO government funding, NO arts council funding, NO outside help, NO justification - just community pride and solidarity. These things HAVE to come from the community! Screw all the people that complain they have not got enough money for their project - that never stopped the Cyclowns and never ever ever stopped the Indians! Art is part of being human! It costs money of course but it is your identity and makes life beautiful and is often as high in human priorities as eating and there are no government-funded eating lotteries so I am not being moronic!

Some old Costumes from the late 90s in Treme museum
You need to dig into your roots and community and you will find more than money - skills, dedication, energy, spirit, pride and love - all things that are often missing from government funded art projects! Artists need respect but they also need to earn it! When they earn it and get it that is a healthy society. When people are spending a lot of money to see some wierd contemporary dance show and some graffitti artist is getting fined for making beautiful murals then society is ill. Everything grows up and watering land with no seed or bad earth is a barren exercise!

Anyhow, preaching over.

On St Joseph's night every year they gather in their neighbourhoods after dark and process about showing themselves off before driving down town for the big get-together where they face off other chiefs and the chief of chiefs is decided upon. The sunday after many Indians come out on parade (without the hostilities) and link up with the second line. At St Joseph's night event there were some scuffles and a gun was fired but the sunday was very peaceful and fun - I wandered ahead of the Second Line to look at them all.

There were more Indians than i could count: over 60 or so, dressed up in their finest costumes with feathers all over the place. The most impressive and active fella was a tall fellow with a huge tomahawk made from feathers and a massive light-kharki colored costume with matching feathers that spread around him in every direction for a meter or two. On his chest and lower skirt there were two huge pictures in beadwork - one of Indians attacking a hill-top of semi naked blond haired white chicks and in the fore ground they were binding one chick with her boobs out and going to do something with her! It looked more than a bit suspicious.

Some old Costumes from the late 90s in Treme museum
On the lower skirt was a more politically correct picture showing 3 indians with bows and arrows and tomahawks burning a wagon full of cowboys and scalping one hopeless cowboy on a horse. The wagon was on fire of corse and the indians and their horses seemed to be flying while the cowboys were squat and heavy.

Beadwork on an Indian's back
The chief wearing these costumes would wave his huge feather tomahawk about the air repeatedly and lick his lips with a big dog like tongue which huge out at the side as he posed with his axe aloft and his legs wide apart and his face screwed up in a look of calculating anger at an invisible foe. Suddenly he would charge ahead in erratic leaps and huge jumps and wave his tongue in the air and hoot and wail and jabber in pidgin english about himself in the thrid person: "Big chief is the coolest, YAH YAH! I pretty front and back, I show you niggers how to be black! RAAAAH! HOOO, HOO, HOO!" etc..... There were many more Indians in even more beautiful costumes but he looked the most authentic of them all! Despite the stories of mixed Creol, Indian and Slave blood the vast majority have no native blood at all but are pure Afro-American - but like the folks in Green on St Patricks day, that is no reason to not celebrate an ancient tradition!

Mardi gras indians on the Super Sunday parade

Indians at the end of the Super Sunday march resting their heavy costumes on the grass

New Orleans - Party time

2009-04-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

partying in new orleans

Me breakdancing on Royal street

me breaking