The October Times

Too many things to keep up with these days. Many classes four nights a week. Weddings. Music festivals. Friends showing their art, friends playing their music. We are dizzy and exhausted and excitable and wary. Yesterday I spent several hours at the beach...picking up artwork and digging my toes in the October sand while enjoying their local coffee. It gave me time to reflect on the past week and all that has come to pass.

Last weekend two European friends were married here on the hill where I began my time in this city. It was beautiful and poignant and sad and elegant...many, many things. It made me wistful to be there although I was excited for my friends who are finally marrying after twelve years of being the coolest couple I know.

The following evening we were walking to a cafe close to our home to hear Rattlemouth, a derivation of the band that played at our wedding reception almost ten years ago...when we passed a carriage being pulled by six white horses...(!)

The carriage was stopped at a redlight next to Mom Siam, our favortie Thai place, Their new deck was open and the man sitting in the front of the carriage played the sort of french horn/bugle chords that are played at the opening of a race track. It was pretty wonderful. It felt like this place had turned a corner! Not us, but IT.

The Rattlemouth show was pure magic. The band played its heart out to the twenty or so people who were there. We realized what fine artists and true, decent men we were watching playing on that stage and we felt lucky to be present, to know them, to hear them. I realized I have been listening to their drums, trumpet, sax and guitars in various incarnations since 1987 or so and it moved me to tears.

I was so happy we made time to hear them. Music is such a healing force and much healthier than pharmaceuticals.