I am still getting over last month at Malasimbo... how many good times I had at this festival and the surrounding festivities, not expecting anything. There was an open vibe, it was the most interesting festival I have ever been to. The first time I had ever truly played tribal. 

I was welcomed at jam after jam, it started with an almost chance encounter with Jing at Making Waves and an hour of free form jams with Raffa and others who stopped by. This netted a surprise invite the next week to jam "back at the house" on the bayou with Jing, Willie, and some excellent Adirondack  folk musicians.

At Malasimbo there were three highlights: first having Louie and some other tribal Boracay stalwarts find me in the camping area the first morning and throw me some island vibes. I captured a bit of that on tape, with the amazingly pure and beautiful fire dancer Rice on harmony vocals. A ukulele-tribal flute version of Follow the Sun.

I also had the opportunity of jamming at the tribal circle, which was pretty deep. Djimbe, gongs, one guy playing sticks on his Brazilian martial arts armor. We launched some heavy jams off the template set by Malasimbo Collective ft. Laneous.

The jam as an outgrowth of the music on stage, a couple hundred yards down a steep hill. Some pretty well known on the Philippine and European tribal circuit (Jils the flute maker, who made my new long oboe-like woodwind). Filtering through mountain thickness, the music took on life its own right, became a hypnotic aural landscape. I was getting into a lot of rhythmic side, thanks to the demon chaser and the new instrument "twin-hearted bamboo stick." Unrepeatable, sick. 

Then onto jams on White Beach (shout out to Coca Aroma, Delgado's). Louie, my old Boracay mentor was on hand to smooth things out. Man it was fine and the flow organic. Only regret: the  reunion performance with Louie was lost for posterity when my iPhone was stolen. We can do it again, but it will be the next evolution.

Another highlight––the last night of the festival I met Jun Marieezy following a superlative set––one of the best performances I have attended since the 2014 Monterey Jazz Festival (Becca Stevens' duet with Ambrose Akinmusire, two strangers passing... chills down the spine). It  turned out I had met her (cemented in memory by a 1920s style hairpiece) as a musician on Boracay four months ago, not knowing who she was. I recounted the funny story of my crashing her private White Beach set with a DJ at the Casbah. She did not quite remember having stood watching me play flute for five minutes (blame it on the stuff in the hookah)––I certainly remembered her hairpiece. A few minutes later the Casbah staff mentioned that she was expected to come back to the mike and improv with the DJ. By now Ms. Marieezy was deeply engaged in hip-bearded conversation and playing checkers, shrugs all around––fool I am, I kept playing.

Though she did not remember the Dude I have become, Jun was happy to see the flute. She balanced it on her hand (surprisingly well) and played a passable run on the talaandig woodwind (surprisingly hard to do) before doing a little dance to my version of the blues. The last words I heard before she wandered off was "you're trippy." Then the mushrooms kicked in. 

Let me back up as usual to a time long ago. Formative moments.

The routine was simple–– my dad would go off and play poker in the evening and I would prevaricate, washing the dishes and listening to old lps with my mom. I learned the nuances of the Beatles that way. Traffic's eponymous first lp, War's The World is a Ghetto also sounded mind-blowing in full analog stereo, as I recall. The Harder They Come. (The late 1960s to early 1970s vibe really fit my experience gardening in the Oakland Hills 6-7 days a week. I would often walk home along verdant windy streets, sweaty from helping dig post holes or set in place a dry-farm garden.** And I would try to get the same beat as on Bob Marley's  Burnin' (Rastaman Chant) in my head. Or I would run through the 1970s era shaky tape version of What is (And What Should Never Be).**

And then I graduated to REM, Hendrix, Jane's, Zeppelin, many others. I was a sponge for sounds: Velvets, Pixies, the almighty Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

And I realized what was wrong with a very heavy alternative scene even before grunge hit and I learned to follow no one but myself. I played the acoustic in my studio apartment, playing along to the heaviest Hendrix I could find, failing at lessons after two weeks....  To Be Continued.

It is now time to get to editing the next section of Arisugawa Park. Certain readers are starting to ken that what has been changed adds vigor and depth. I have to decide which section really belongs next and how to improve it. Jigsaw puzzle fun, working on this "letter to a future me" novel, ninja style.

I read an article about Nick Drake a year ago––at his funeral, many of London's most creative artists were surprised to learn that they were mutual acquaintances of the elusive bard. Tangentially linked lives and friendships. He kept his circles separate, purposefully. Because he fed on different vibes and situations. To him life was an individual exploration, not a social game. Unfortunately, he was also dreamily suicidal.* 

For those more regulated, who can still appreciate the late poet's gift, there is the reassurance that this is not a bad way to live. Each of our friends, in person and online, provides us with some distinct tangent that cannot be compared. Each one is deserving of attention (or inattention, at times) and is part of our mindful meanderings. 

To know that we are reaching those we choose to reach. With words alone, if necessary. How very Emersonian.

In tomorrow's post, I'll go all technical on you: brief conversation with green MIIS economist Jason Scorse (author of Sufonomics 101) on the new $15-an-hour California minimum wage. It will center on my experience as an IT-contracted writer (the dreaded Independent Contractor)––labeled by Forbes as a 'contingent' worker in the May, 2015, article Shocker: 40% of Workers Now Have 'Contingent' Jobs, Says U.S. Government.

Pitch like crazy, don't expect to get paid.
Realize that money itself is the curse, 
the ghosts of electricity that Dylan 
moaned about, well they were the 
husks of a civilization that had 
planted a bomb between its legs,
set to a timer, unable to unharness itself 
to escape free.

You and I know better, you and I know better, 
and Patty Hearst, you sit there 
with your sisters, and all they can 
do is cry

confounded by the mere power of existence
while around foot soldiers dyin' and tryin'
and around you they blanket the soil 
with neurotoxins and even put that shit 
in the substance you eat.

Vomiting up plastic scavenged from the 
Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 
brought to Geiger-friendly 
Midway Atoll, transferred by regurgitation
con amor, into the little one's belly,
whose stomach is never empty and never full.

How does it feel, to be on your own, 
in the deep doodoo of our thankless bondage, 
watching forces not your own, 
do good, do bad, carve out 
wildernesses of uninhabitable hostility?

I am of the people, I am separated by a guard,
my fabric is your fabric, is not my fabric––
Come on, even Trump wants to breathe 
clean air, eat genetically unmodified steaks
that degrade in time, unlike McWhatever––
especially Trump. 

Only he thinks that others should pay and pay. 
The smell of a world that has burned.

​Deviceless,* not even a pen, on the road from Sipalay along a pair of old-style bus routes, arm out the window, taking in coastal Philippine life. An oddly arid tropical landscape (victim of goats and general overgrazing I think, after discounting mining scars)––or maybe victim of the hottest February on record?*

Whatever the case, there is no intactly lush forest vegetation the whole way through, except one small patch that will be explored at leisure someday. It is not just aridness––that has a stark beauty of its own––but population explosion, small huts and ugly concrete in florid colors spread over almost the entire coast. Separated by however many clicks of palm and fruit groves, rice and corn fields, chicken huts. 

Which is not to say that that this Marquezian landscape is not achingly beautiful in its own way. Provincial life unfolds with much open air basketball and swinging in dooya (hammocks). There is always the Sari Sari store for pica pica and 15 peso glass bottles of cane sugar Coca Cola and Mountain Dew (curse of the non-non-soda carbonated beverage culture-–i.e. sugar fiends).

The remnant forest, passed in 15 seconds (but there) reassures me that naturally this landscape would be stupendously beautiful.... It is just that wildlife is not really allowed to exist unscathed––local gastronomic favorites on the beach near Sipalay include lizard and monkey. The forest has been turned into patches of flat grassland that support carabao, not native life forms. Trash is thrown in natural areas that would otherwise be charming. And yet, happiness or a pretty good simulacrum abounds.***

The Road from Sipalay. I really began to feel the vibe when I enter the town of Siohan,  the first city-dense congregation of buildings and people I have seen that still has the pre-asphalt, pre-tricycle vibe. Here is a rural place on the cusp, still adhering to a familial level of rules and civility. Yet really teeming. Cebu, Dumaguete, must have been like this once.

 And then, after slipping through a landlocked landscape of truly parched hills and plateaus––at times the nipa hut precariousness and on-the-edge solitude is savannah-like in quality––we wind up on the Dumaguete side of the coast, where plantation and mining-rich Negros Occidental gives way to Cebu-focused Oriental. Where Asian trade routes predominated, not sultanates or plantations.  A true shift in trade winds. 

Note: the perils of staying on an isolated beach with shitty Internet are self evident. This post is three days late. Look for Arisugawa Park 1.5 in a couple hours. ​

Okay, a break from Ari Park* for a Chasing the Sun intermission. This new recording combines specific environments and introduces a new reggae song that I woke up with fully formed in my mind, at the MNL in Makati.

At first I thought "He Made His Way From the City (Fly Away Home)" was a Bob Marley song but, raking my brain, I could not identify it as such. So I mumbled it into the iPhone (RIP).  As presented, it is the working out of a new reggae song that is distinct enough that I want to record it with a few ace musicians in the near future. Could be the Louie-Voltaire unit or the Jahpoy-Nils-Chuckie unit. Could be both, to compare results. There are also some tribal ska songs that I would like to get professionally recorded.

Fly Away Home has a specific message that anyone who has spent too much time in a sprawling urban environ aching to be back where trees exist can relate with. The soundscape that follows is a travel back in time to Mindoro, a place of semi-abundant––if not intact––natural beauty. And of relentless tricycle and jeepney led covering over. 

The Wild Lagoon flute is a mythological narrative concerning a fish, bait, reeling, unreeling, and finally an eternal whirlpool where two arch enemy brothers meet. Yin and yang, black and white.

Followed by a very loose take on an old blues classic done by Leadbelly, Jim Morrison, Cobain, among others. Also integrated are field recordings of a kid in Sablayan teaching his younger brother how to play the mouth flute.

My conception of what is possible is expanding. My devices are lost, there may not be more mendicant recordings for a while. Enjoy fellow travelers.

SEO Alert: Damon Shulenberger, aka EnduranceWriter. Makin' Waves.

* 1489 visits to the site yesterday (scratch that, three days ago), a record. There is an audience for this, somehow. I continue to edit a new section of Arisugawa Park, for tomorrow "David and Eve Collide. "Not as exciting as Superman v. Batman, I know....

** Shakespeare is addressing the topical subject of Huguenot asylum-seekers in ca. 1600 London. On the refugee issue, he writes: 

You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in lyam
To slip him like a hound.

Alas, alas! Say now the King
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour?

Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England:
Why, you must needs be strangers.

Humanist to the bone. Will joins Mark Twain on the list of writers I admire. 

I want to thank those dozens of brainwashed innocents who put their minds in my hands for a couple minutes each day––because, yes, I am also pretty hard to get into or out of a rut. Exponentialize that with distractions.*

And let me be the first to say, Ari Park is far from a rut. It is my exploration of multilayer Tokyo, like an excavation. Real incidents, visions, memories, fevered dreams. It all winds up in a blur, the dragon eating its tail.

I stopped listening to pundits, I started simply doing. The goal is effortless, concerted. The reality not so bad. I meet my deadlines. And I push myself further. Like  Wong Jack Man sizing up Bruce Lee. Writing is a push against reality as we know it.

The past year I have built a small, dedicated readership that understands what I am attempting. If this is not jazz, mixed with the folkloric and a touch of the wistful (futurist), I do not know what it is. 

I have been putting up sections of Ari Park almost daily, from an undisclosed island location. I take these final revisions seriously––almost a rewriting process. In real time. Cowachunga-lite.

Ok, back to the heavy lifting of getting the next Ari Park section in the air.

On a throwback Sugar Beach with empty sand and brilliant sunset, swimming is fun again. The bungalow is set among the trees, the mosquito net protects. The flute is alone, distinct, and acoustic.

I cannot explain how profoundly the smartphone set gets me down, though I am traveling with a native goddess who could go either way. Ah, life.

Meanwhile, I have realized that ultra devious (in the way suicide bombers are) Trump is laughing whatever the GOP decides to do. If they nominate them, he loses against Hillary, but now he has been allowed to define the Republican Party on his own terms. In other words, as a party of people on crash collision with other people living within the United States.

If Trump gets excommunicated he can go all brown shirt, which means splinter third party . He may sense a way of winning a split general election vote, the same way he surfed the fractured candidate field in the Republic primary, creating a bedrock authoritarianism-leaning voting machine. He could go all old-school thug in his strategy––fascists (Make America Great) vs. socialists (1% protestors). In either case, he will not win this year, next year, but he has set the stage for someone truly scary to arise who will actually have the mandate to act in a time of crisis. Hitler did not arise in a vacuum, he was more than a decade in the making.*

In unrelated news, Ari Park 1.3 is going live in a couple hours. Check out Ari Park's prologue, and first and second sections if you haven't already.

*To counter all this, Fabric, which gets people on the same page and attuned to the mechanics of making the world one of parity and sustainability. 

It is not hard to guess where some well known writers would fall on the current immigration/imperialism debates. Take Mark Twain––an opponent of Theodore Roosevelt on many levels, he strongly criticized a situation in which America went into Philippines nominally to help it overthrow the Spanish yoke and became a colonial overseer itself.

There were oppressive aspects to that engagement, including the massacre of entire "rebel" communities in the mountains of Mindanao. The book contains strident, undeniably passionate, essays by Twain  on what was, in certain respects, the Iraq War of its day (except that the European powers were in even deeper colonial doo-doo).*

The link to recent events is that Donald Trump latched onto the story of a real-life Philippine massacre that must stand as one of the most inglorious episodes of American involvement in Southeast Asia, short of Vietnam and (arguably) the atom bombing of Japan.

Naturally, Trump glorified it, using a made-up version of the story to explain his strategy for dealing with the "Muslim problem."**  As explained by blogger and historian Paul Matzko:

"On the Friday before the South Carolina Republican primary, Trump told the story of US Army General John Pershing who, faced by recalcitrant Muslim insurgents during the US occupation of the Philippines, ordered the execution of 49 prisoners. To add quite literal insult to injury, Pershing ordered the executioners to use bullets dipped in pig’s blood, a violation of Islamic halal dietary restrictions."

Matzo goes on to look at the historical provenance of that apocryphal story, which he calls a variation on the "chain letter hoax."*** Trump, hyperbole fully loaded, fashioned the story as such:  "He caught 50 terrorists that did tremendous damage and killed many people and he took the 50 terrorists and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pig's blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people, and the 50th person, he said; "You go back to your people and you tell them what happened."

I am going to refrain from further comment, though it is interesting to see this recent Trump-Sanders Twitter interaction:

You can guess which side I am on and, yes, I would support Hillary over Trump. 

​SEO Alert: Damon Shulenberger, aka EnduranceWriter.

​*As  Erskine Childers' ur-thriller Riddle of the Sands (1903) illustrates, the major powers were also preparing for major Continental warfare. 

** God help us if Trump gets his hands on nukes.

*** Matzko also writes: this hoax actually isn’t all that unbelievable in the context of the Philippine-American War, which was fraught with very real atrocities committed by US soldiers (although official accounts of the time valorized the conflict). The low end of estimates for people killed during the conflict is just under a quarter of a million, most of whom were civilians. Bald statistics are less compelling than individual stories, but we also have a multitude of accounts of massacres and torture inflicted...."

Malasimbo Festival tribal jam is up on Soundcloud at 4HFlute and it is insane. Take a listen World Music lovers and people with ears. 
​
"A jam out of time at the Malasimbo Festival in Puerto Gallera, Mindoro... on the stage was the Malasimbo Collective featuring Laneous, We were on the hillside listening in and then ultimately harmonizing and creating our own thing. This is what collective music is all about. Wish I knew the names of all the participants. I am alternately on flute and percussion, but which specific instances are me and which are group think....

The initial song Follow the Sun is at the campsite in the early morning, with my good friend Louie. Rice on harmony. For more Louie see "Spirits (Paris Exorcism) - Lokal Bar, Boracay"

Naturally, the flute is predominate in this mix, which reflects my involvement in the jams. The overall character was that I joined for a time then went off to the stage. There were a multitude of jams.... but I may not be wrong in positing that this was one of the very best. ​

Post-Michigan, I am enthused enough about Bernie Sanders "comeback" to feel generous.

We need Bernie Sanders. Possibly we also need Donald Trump, who knows? We need Marc Rubio and we need John Kasich. Hell, we need Al Gore and Jimmy Carter (more than ever). We need George W. Bush's art and George H. Bush's wisdom in repudiating his son's vision. We needed Kennedy, we needed the Stones (after all it was you and me).

We need a bush of burning fire. We need a way forward, in variegated unity. All the losers, mopers, wheelers, lawyers, assholes, fence-posts, milling dealers. Feel the Bern.*

To this we add the con men, the jammers, the last energetic souls on the last forgotten beach. The vista seekers.

I have not expressed how rude this quest is. The Dig Ye flows like wine, from outside looking in (belly button window).

In other news, through loss/theft of devices in recent weeks, I have lost a number of key jams that I wish I could have shared by now. A really far out (think tribal Philippines meets Jefferson Airplane) night with Talahiv at bar1951 on Adriactico. A recent reunion jam with Louie at Delgado's on White Beach, Puerto Gallera. And a lot of other experimental stuff. Just vibes and scales, bamboo trying for new pulses, vibrations.

Who knows, maybe all these devices will reappear? As it will be, so shall it flow.... In a way there is something cleansing about the loss of work that is not backed up. It is like that art project on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, where all the pieces are burnt after public creation. 

In any case, the stuff in the musical pipe keeps getting better and better. There is now an intricate Malasimbo Festival jam circle that I am stitching together (with a little ukulele trio and some field recordings thrown in). Those were salvaged, somehow through device interaction. 

We need a burning bush, we need a burning bush.