Spring Break Comes

It's time!  I'm halfway through the semester (horrifying, isn't it?), which means that Spring Break is nigh!  Come Monday morning Ian and I are picking up a Wicked Van to tour around Tassie with for the entire week.  We'll be caravaning with a bunch of awesome German folks, and our American friend Kat.  As such, I'll only be taking my phone with me, so no internet action (or at the very least, a quick email check at a hostel).  We get back Saturday night in time for a wedding gig Sunday.

Oh, and Cathy is loaning us an old mandolin to mess around with.  The little buggers are mucho easy to play and pick up melodies with--I can't wait to bust out some awesome campfire jams.

Well, I hate to wax brief, but I gotta get up quite early to help Becca haul her gear to the Uni, then get the van and hit the road, so off I am to sleep.  Farewell!

Heavy Lidded Our Eyes

Last Friday marked the longest I've ever been from home.  Two months.  And I have only four left.  Already I am one third through my stay across the oceans and below the equator.  I fear for what I cannot hope to experience before my return: there is so much that I have yet to touch or see, feel, taste, or even smell.  But, you could say such for any place, any time.  When I do return, Charleston will be like a new photograph of an old place.  I will see each tree and river and beach with new eyes.  Eyes perhaps a little wider, in both innocence and awareness.  I cannot wait--but I oh, so desperately need to.  I need to keep children's eyes for all of Tasmania, and Australia, and New Zealand.  I will.

This week marks the last before Spring break, for which I and several others shall be renting a Wicked Van and traveling around Hobart, Launceston, and anywhere else that our petrol purses can purchase.  But, until then I still have work to complete for Sculpture (though I just finished my wooden Kukri today; I had to use the leg of my kitchen table for a vice to hand gouge the inlays into the blade), and Australian Texts & Traditions.  Currently, Foundation Audio has flatlined somewhat, but at least I now have access to all the recording studios, which Ian and myself have already begun to mess around in.  What's more, this Friday night is the FolkFed's monthly dance!  And it's nothing but CONTRAS!  And we in the Old Time String Band are playing (though I intend to get a bunch of great dancing in)!  Ah, how I love music, making it and hearing and dancing to it.

I'm sorry if I've been aloof or silent these past days, those back home, but I've been doing a lot of thinking and work for my classes.  I bought a discount webcam, so Skype is back in action; hit me up.  Farewell, until next I need to write.

Tapping Veins

I have, at last, leapt into the folk dance and music scene of Hobart.  And what a scene it is!  This past Saturday (still in the throes of tonsillitis) I ventured to 58 Melville St with Ian and Kat for a FolkFedTas (Folk Federation of Tasmania) folk dance.  It was billeted as a collection of different styles, from Balkan folk and English folk to American contra and Irish steps, which meant that I got to jive in over a dozen new dances for over three and a half hours!  Incredible people, a bunch of gleaming smiles attached to swirling legs--incredibly interesting, from all over the world and eager to meet anyone.  It took mere moments to make friends.
Nonesuch, the band, was nothing short of beautiful (the bouzouki player was incredible; kept the band real tight with his rhythms while looking like a reformed psychedelic Abe Lincoln).  They specialize in Balkan music, so we got to hear a ton of that stuff.  Real lingering, phantasmal sounds.  The dances, though, were simple circle dances with a basic stepping pattern.  The highlight of the evening's dances (excepting the contra, which was intensely fun to get back into after over a month and a half's absence) was the English folk dance, Nonesuch.  It was written for king Henry VIII's "grandest hunting mansion in Britain," Nonesuch.  This is a rather convoluted dance that took, all things considered, almost twenty five minutes to do.  The song, Nonesuch, which the band (also Nonesuch) performed, was a scarecrow of a number: haunting, lilting, like dripping fog at close of day.  I strongly encourage you to try it out, if you can find a band to play the song, a caller to know how to call it, and enough folks to dance it (at least eight).
The day after, we met up with the same folks in a tiny, ancient rec center / church.  There, Ian and I got to play with the band for two hours while Becca learned some cool steps in some of the dances.  Dave and Cathy (who are the Hobart equivalents of Conway and Pops Saylor for you Charleston folks) offered to snag a copy of Hobart's popular folk tunes (an actual printed document) for Ian and myself.
This Thursday is Danceaholics Unanimous, a casual gathering of local dancers who want to check out new things, hone techniques, find / present new musics etc.
I am fresh and thick in the vein of folk now, up to my elbows.