The Chocolate Cake War

Eating chocolate cake for breakfast is what I do when there is no kitchen. I am eating it now,
The corporation I rent from began extensive renovations on my apartment in September. When they notified me in July I had no idea how much it would effect me. That my life would be upset for 3 months. They gave me a 10% discount on my rent but my life was 50% destroyed. I work from home. I make calls, rehearse, record, relax at home. September 3 they came in like a conquering army in blue overalls clutching power tools. They covered everything with plastic and the entire apartment in a fine white powder as they drilled holes in my walls and moved everything in the kitchen into the living room, where it remains.
The first battle we fought over access to my apartment. They wanted in at 8 in the morning. I refused. I asked a friend with legal background to compose an announcement that there would be no entry before 10 in the morning. Buzz until your finger is numb. You ain’t getting in. I told her to tell them I am an American well accustomed to killing without remorse but I think she ignored what she hoped was another example of my odd sense of humor. I don’t know what she wrote but it was effective. A small win for the home team. I taped it to the front door. They raised hell outside my apartment but I was inside with 2 pillows pulled over my head sleeping until 10.
Then I went to Romania on tour for 3 weeks. The tour was not to escape the carnage at home but it was a relief to both myself and the workers when I handed them my key and said I would see them in 3 weeks. Theoretically the work should have been complete and my life back to normal 3 days before my return. It wasn’t.
November 3 I left Romania on a early morning flight, took the train from Munich to Nuremberg then the subway to my apartment. Walking the last 100 meters home I was full of the relief that anyone who travels a lot understands. Home. Your bed. Your stuff. Your little world. No. It was still a fucking war zone.
I announced I was back and the 10 o’clock rule was back to the one worker who speaks English. She translated and I could see in their faces this war between their need to do this job and mine to have a life in the apartment I paid rent for was back on. I had heat that night because I reminded them to turn on whatever switch in the basement that they turn off during the day so they can work on the system. The next night there was no heat.
I figured it was time to raise the stakes in our little skirmish. I sent off an email to the corporation I rent from that I was sitting in a freezing apartment for the last night and tomorrow was moving to the most expensive hotel I could find and sending the bill to them. Furthermore I wanted my kitchen back in the kitchen space and out of my living room immediately or I would eat in very nice restaurants and pass that cost along as well with the hotel bills. In the last paragraph I gave them my lawyer’s name and number and requested any further communications be with her.
Then I went down to the basement where the workmen take their breaks and stole their heater. It was staying with me until my heat was guaranteed. It warmed my apartment very well that night. Just before dawn I turned it off and rolled it under my desk where it was well hidden. If my ability to be warm in the evening was not important to them their ability to get out of the cold during the day was not too important either.
The next morning my buzzer rang at 9:30. I almost ignored it but didn’t. The seldom seen owner of the construction company swept in screaming at the site foreman who came in behind him cringing like a kicked dog.
I can reconstruct what happened that morning between 7AM and 9:30 while I was sleeping. My rental corporation had called the construction company owner and explained they had every intention of passing my future hotel and restaurant bills to him.

This was not the way he wanted to start his day and it soured whatever little bit of a good mood he woke up with. He drove to the site, my apartment, where I was peacefully dreaming of things better not put on the Internet without parental consent and a password.He passed his pain directly along onto the head of the asshole who neglected my heat last night . After giving this guy a long, hard talking to he sweetly explained to me I was getting a new kitchen immediately and there would be no more problems with the heat.
I kept the work crew’s heater under my desk anyway just because they pissed me off. They came in pretending to look for lost tools all day because they correctly suspected I’d taken it. They pretended to look for lost tools and I pretended to believe them. I returned it that night so presumably they understood we were now even.
All this work should be complete in a week or so. Our little war of wills will be a memory. I will have an improved apartment. They will move on to terrorize some other building. I will continue to believe if there were more ethnic Germans in my building and less immigrants they would have behaved better. And I wouldn’t be so tired of chocolate cake.

White Snow at the Black Sea

There was snow in the mountains as I came into Romania. I was up for about 30 hours so when I reached bed slept like the dead for about 16 hours. When I pulled open the drapes of my hotel in Constanti the Black Sea was laying at my feet. The day was gray and the sea was charcoal color but it was the sea, beautiful and so close. It had been a year since I last saw snow and 3 years since I last saw an ocean so it was a good day.

  So far I’ve played 3 dates this tour. The first was a classic rock bar and it went well. At 9 PM there was no one. I looked away and by 10 PM when I went on it was full. The audience was fun and the night passed well. The second was in Bucharest at a book store, the exact opposite of the first. I sat and played unplugged to a room full of people, most original stuff but, as always, some covers because people, even literary people, like to hear something they know once in a while. The third gig was in Lugoj at a bar. It was also good. Not much to say except the owner, Florin, made everything very easy and fun and if  he reads this I thank him, as well as all the club owners on this tour, for their understanding that touring can be difficult under the best of circumstances and all help is appreciated.

In the midst of all this I managed a new song. It sort of fell on my head and was one of those 30 minute wonders. 99% was written in my head as I rode a city bus. I wrote it down, refined the choras a bit in my hotel and it was complete. I performed it the next night and it felt like it had been part of the show forever. That’s a good sign. It’s called “If You Don’t Want Me” and will be on the new CD, no question. I seem to have a pattern now of squeezing them out about 1 every few weeks on average. I can live with this.

So now there are a few more dates on this tour then I am home in Germany for the first gig with Rusty Boots. I’m just playing bass with them and singing a few as they already have their band and I am the new guy. This is nice though. I can kick back with the excellent drummer and have fun not worrying about anything except finding good grooves. Life is too fucking good? Quite possibly, yes.

Spaghetti Day and Manifest Destiny

Every day is spaghetti day at La Mohr. 7 days a week for 3.90 Euro you can by any one of 4 varieties of spaghetti. Add a beer and you still get a good meal, including tip for one of the flirtatious waitresses for 7 Euro. My alternative is a curried chicken with rice from the Asian restaurant around the corner, same price, no flirty waitress. There are other alternatives obviously. If spending more bought a better meal I would go there but it doesn’t. It reminds me of something the bartender at the Hubba Hubba said. I will let the name of this bar in the red light district pass by without comment. He said the difference between a 50 Euro girl and a 100 Euro girl is 50 Euro and better marketing. He would know. I don’t think 1 Euro espresso is their primary source of income. This little joke came as he figured out I was probably only going to be an espresso customer. In a kilometer circle around my apartment I am at home. Why am I here? I don’t know. Nuremberg is not exciting. It’s not Berlin, Munich or even Hamburg. I don’t remember ever deciding this is where I choose to live but here I am. It’s my manifest destiny, like me appearing at both the Asian restaurant and La Mohr regularly. In Nashville back in the USA I worked with some brilliant musicians. One in particular attended an expensive university and received what should have been an expensive degree in marketing. He paid little to go to school on what was called by some a PK scholarship. PK stands for Preacher’s Kid. Belmont University is a religious University with serious academic credentials. It’s not one of those silly evangelistic universities when you major in the Old Testament, right wing dogma and narrow mindedness. Chris’s problem was a nice but dominating girlfriend who had no interest in being the wife of a musician, no matter how successful, when she could be the wife of a marketing executive. Pressure was also coming less overtly from his parents who wanted him to do well in life and, while they supported his musical life, believed the career he’d prepared for and degreed in was a better choice to support their future grandkids. Chris told me on a long drive back to Nashville one night he’d interviewed for a real job the day before. A career job. Big money and big responsibilities. He said the radio was playing softly as he spoke with the man interviewing him. What distracted him was the guitar solo on the song playing and how beautiful it was. When he should have been discussing his possible new job he was analyzing what scale and what effects the guitarist had possibly used to get that sound. Chris laughed and we changed the subject to his upcoming marriage. He’s far too good to spend is life being a brilliant musician weekends at the local bar and a mediocre marketing executive 5 days a week, at least in my opinion. I doubt in the short run he managed to stand up to the people who loved him and wanted the “best” for him. We lost touch when I started to tour more. Did his manifest destiny ever kick in and save him from a comfortable, secure life? Did he finally end up on big stages amazing audiences the way he amazed me? Who knows? I think that’s what happened though. Manifest destiny is like an erection. It has a mind of it’s own and generally prevails, for better or worse.

Berlin, 2 A.M.

I’ll work backwards. It’s early Sunday morning after a gig in the center of Berlin’s night life. It was good. They were dancing, singing, even demanded an encore. It worked. After getting paid I went to my favorite Berlin all night Asian place and had my usual Duck curry with vegetables and rice. In a few hours I will start the trip home to Nürnberg.

The evening prior, Friday, I played in a more sedate pub. It was ok but they were a hard audience to work with. And last night was bad in another way. I will explain. The problem has it’s roots the previous night. Instead of getting to bed earlier than usual so I could start for Berlin I went to bed later than usual and started the trip to Berlin after a few hours sleep. I arrived tired. I checked into my hotel determined to get some sleep so I could function that evening. I succeeded beyond my expectations. In short, I overslept. I threw my clothes on and walked quickly for the subway. I was on the subway at Potsdammer Platz when I realized I didn’t have my gig bag full of nessessary things like microphones and cables. Did I leave it on the bench at my original station where it was almost surely gone by now or the hotel where I could simply go back and get it? I tried to come up with a plan B where I could get through the evening without these things and buy a new mic plus nessessary cables for the gig tomorrow night during the day. It wasn’t at the station when I got back. That meant it was either stolen or back in the hotel room. It was in the hotel room. My heart slowed down when I opened the door and saw it on my unmade bed where I’d left it. I grabbed it and hurried back to the subway station. It was 2 stops then a change of subway lines to get to the gig. On the train my mobile phone rang. The pub owner was wondering where I was. I assured him all was ok and I would be there soon. Turns out I was wrong. When I left the first subway train to connect to the second I discovered I couldn’t find the second train. After some crazy rushing around I discovered you had to leave the underground, walk half a block and then go downstairs again to catch the second train. I finally found it. By now I should have been sound checked and ready to play, I arrived at the right station. I exited the station at the wrong exit and was lost. I couldn’t find the street the pub was on. Finally someone helped me and I found the street. Then I went a couple blocks in the wrong direction because there were no street numbers on the buildings to figure out whether to go right or left at the corner. I chose right. I should have chosen left. I walked a long way before discovering this. I turned around and walked in the right direction. I arrived at the pub at about the moment I thought I should be starting my first set. Turns out I wasn’t supposed to start for a half hour. I drank a beer, sound checked and played. All turned out ok but it wasn’t a great night. I’m not sure how much of this was me and how much was them. Either way it ended ok and that is the point.

So now I’m killing time in Berlin waiting for my 5 A.M. train home, belly full of duck curry and some Euros in my pocket. What doesn’t kill you makes you strong is what I’m told. I don’t want to get any stronger.

Ships in the night

I live in my own skin so I’m not privy to the inner life of others. About once in every long while, maybe a year, I cross the path of someone I believe with absolute certainty I could make happy and be happy with. I suspect this happens to everybody. As life twists and spins I am suddenly looking at this woman and she is looking at me with the same certainty. She’s perfect. My every nerve ending is reaching for her. Generally one or both of us are in a relationship we want to keep so it goes no further or for one reason or another it simply isn’t going to happen. Life gets in the way. If I’m happy in a relationship I avoid this innocent woman’s siren call for me to mess my life up again. The worst (best?) was in Oregon when my daughter was about 4. This woman was a friend of my drummer’s wife. I was living in a town where most of the musicians met each other in constantly shifting bands and formed a loose society of friends and acquaintances. We would cross paths at the grocery store, parties and gigs. She taught at my daughter’s preschool, not my daughter’s class thank God. I contrived to walk past her classroom door every morning after dropping my daughter off for a second of eye contact. We never spoke. For a year or so we circled each other but never spoke. My wife and I separated. A few weeks later I was waiting in a bus shelter trying to keep out of the Oregon rain. She pulled her car up at the curb in front of me and opened the door. We looked at each other. I got up and into her car. She pulled back into traffic. No one spoke until she said without taking her eyes from the road “Where to?” I said “Just drive.” We ended up at a rest stop along the freeway just North of town. We sat at a picnic table under a big tree and talked. The rain stopped. The sky cleared. The sun went down and the stars came out. And we talked. We talked about everything we wanted to talk about all those times we couldn’t. It came out like a flood when the dam breaks. It turns out she noticed I usually passed her classroom door about the same time each morning and tried to be at the head of the room each morning so she could catch my eye. The upshot of it all was that she was moving to Canada the next day. There was no question of me leaving my daughter to follow her. The next day I drove her to the airport. I stood at the window watching her plane rise and disappear into the clouds. There hasn’t been anything like such a spectacular near miss since then. The encounters still occur semi-regularly. They’re still powerful but I know how to handle them now. At this point I’m drawn to grown women with a real life she’s put together with a lot of effort. Sometimes she has children, a career, a home, frequently a relationship that may not sparkle anymore but is stable, an underestimated virtue. For far too long I was unfaithful to some good women taking these attractions to their illogical conclusion. Now when it occurs we smile at each other with a mingling of mutual attraction and nervousness, avoid being alone together then go our separate ways as soon as possible. If I’m in a relationship I am extra solicitous to her that night to remind myself that I am happy. Staring at the ceiling before going to sleep I admit my mind wanders. I wonder if she’s doing the same thing in another bed across town. Then I kiss the sleeping woman next to me who mumbles something that might be “I love you” before going to sleep myself. Growing up is a long, painful, ongoing process but it’s worth it.

Will you love me tomorrow?

I live half of a block from the red light district. Along the city walls for about 3 long blocks bored looking women sit on stools in windows undressed to thrill. As might be expected the district is rimmed with bars. I’m not sure what the girls cost but beer at the bar around the corner from my apartment is cheap and good. One would hope you could say the same about the sex. There is a bar with 1 Euro espresso very near. I sit outside there warm afternoons when the street is quiet. After dark the character changes and it becomes too noisy. Afternoons the girls, in wrap around sunglasses, totter out on spiked heels for a bit of sun, their hair in messy pony tails. They smoke cigarettes, laugh loudly and yell across the street in every language except German or English to other girls doing the same thing. After months here I am known enough to elicit nods of recognition when I take an outside chair with my afternoon espresso. We don’t talk much. There’s nothing to say beyond Hello and Isn’t a nice day? The bar closest to me has an incredibly loud jukebox. I know the owner. She’s a nice woman who misses Poland but is making too much money here to go home. She stocks the jukebox with old rock songs, classic rhythm and blues and Polish pop music. The only time I hear the Polish pop music is very late when she is cleaning the bar around the last few die hard drinkers so she can go home. Last night I went to bed about 3 AM. As I was drifting off to sleep the old Sherrells song “Will you love me tomorrow” was being played over and over. Somewhere in California, Phil Spector, the man who recorded and produced the song 40 years ago is in the prison cell where he will die of old age for killing a woman while playing with one of his many guns. Gerry Coffin who wrote the song with Carol King is dead 2 years now. But tonight the song is alive and fresh as the night it was recorded, at least to whoever put all those Euros in to hear it 10 or 15 times in a row. The last 2 lines are “Tonight the light of love is in your eyes, but will you love me tomorrow?” An interesting choice of song for a bar in the red light district. If I had to guess I would have to say the answer is probably, sadly, no.

Stealing

Stealing towels from hotels has never been a habit. In my life I’ve done it only once, at the Hotel Carmen. It wasn’t so great a towel that I just had to break the habit of a lifetime and put it in my suitcase. The evening prior in that same room and the hotel restaurant I’d argued my way into a separation from someone I’d loved so on some unconscious level maybe I was taking revenge on the blameless hotel. It is a pretty nice towel though. I just used it.
I am reminded of a girlfriend who toured Canada with me about 15 years ago. Most hotels provided us with a pot of tea in our room with breakfast. On the last morning of our stay she stole a teapot. Ok, a teapot is nice. We can use it when, if ever, we get home. After that she was unstoppable. She stole a teapot from every hotel we stayed at and we lived on the road for most of that year. She had to buy extra luggage to carry all her teapots. I didn’t say anything. It seemed like a harmless, if odd, little vice in an otherwise very nice law abiding woman. I did refuse to carry her clanking noisy bag in hopes she would stop when it became too heavy.
We were on a train that stopped in the middle of the Canadian nowhere where nowhere is what they do best. We were boarded by police who went from car to car making people open their bags for inspection. Probably they were looking for drugs or some sort of contraband but I joked with her that they were looking for the famous teapot thief. I mentioned that this was a serious crime in Canada and I hoped she didn’t have to be some big muscular lesbian’s girlfriend in prison. She took me seriously. When the police entered our compartment she was shaking.
Opening her luggage they saw all her teapots, looked at her curiously, said nothing and moved on the the next compartment. I’d like to say she stole no more teapots but at least she only stole nice ones from then on.
When we broke up she caught a bus from Canada back to the USA on a cold Toronto morning. She had a suitcase full of clothing and another full of teapots. She slipped out of my life with one suitcase. After she’d gone I noticed she’d left the teapot suitcase behind. I left it too. Whoever found it later found a lifetime supply of teapots.
Last night I played a pub where the point is energy. Slam them with one uptempo song after the other. I didn’t enjoy it but on another level I’m glad I can do these gigs. This is as bad as it gets in my profession. And it ain’t that bad. On the plus side I got to be ungodly loud and that’s always nice, at least for me. I played late. Drank and hung out even later, caught the 4 A.M. night liner bus home and slept the sleep of the blameless. I woke up in the middle of the afternoon, showered with a stolen towel and thought about the one who made me steal it.

Berlin

Berlin is an attitude. It’s a place packed with expatriates from all over the world, oddball Germans who didn’t fit in where they came from, students, artists, etc. If you took the Turkish population from Berlin and put them in their own city in Turkey it would be the third largest city in Turkey, or so I’m told. Rent is cheap. There is a thriving night life. You can buy the best city tour available for less than 2 Euro on the S-Bahn cross town train. Kick back and watch one of the world’s finest cities go by. From the hip coolness of Kreutzburg to the Eastern Europeanness of Wedding (I went to a party once in Wedding that could have been in Poland in 1970. It was mostly writers, painters, poets etc. from various Eastern Bloc countries. The women wore a lot of eye shadow. I thought they were exotic and beautiful. The men were bearded and used a lot of hand motions when they talked) you can find whatever you are looking for there. I played in Steglitz last night. Steglitz is a village dropped in the center of urban Berlin. Quiet suburban feeling streets, women with baby carriages, green areas, small neighborhood businesses. If I moved to Berlin I would live in Steglitz. The Celtic Cottage is a classic Irish pub in the center of it all. They serve a fine Cottage Pie with green salad. I arrived early for the gig and ate dinner sitting outside on one of the last of 2009′s warm summer nights while changing guitar strings. I played from 8 O’clock until the bartender said it was time to stop. I took a couple short breaks but It felt so good to play that night that after a few minutes I found myself wandering back to the stage,tuning up and playing again. The room filled and stayed full. They were a multi-national group who liked to comment and communicate with me and each other between songs. In the corner 2 girls talked and laughed except during the slow romantic songs when they paused, listened, then returned to conversation during the uptempo stuff. After the show I took a night bus to the Hauptbahnhof where I waited for my train. Funny thing. 24 hours of Berlin. Now I’m home. Except for some Euros in the bank it’s like I never left.

Sauntering

Sauntering. This is a little used word in the 21st century. It’s a leisurely walk that implies one isn’t going anywhere specific but is just walking to look at wherever his feet happen to take him. I see people walking leisurely sometimes. I see people walking purposefully often. Sauntering is rare. It’s got attitude. It implies that everyone else has it all wrong and the saunterer has it right. Whatever “it” is. It helps that the guy I saw today was eating an apple. He was walking on Konigstrasse clearly at peace with his existence. He put a little extra motion in his stride and slowed down to look at a beautiful woman that passed him. She smiled briefly at him. Maybe she has a weakness for men who saunter. He looked at children playing by the fountain. He took small bites of his apple and looked at whatever caught his eye. Finally he passed out of my sight. I’ll bet the Dali Lama saunters when no one’s looking and he doesn’t have to be holy. Maybe he wears a fake goatee and Blues brothers sunglasses so no one notices and thinks he’s not being holy enough. Being holy all the time, like the Dali Lama, must be tough. In my whole life I might have managed to be holy, if you add up all the moments, maybe 12 seconds total. Before I die I want to get it up to a minute. I played a gig last night that I play often. I am background noise to most of the audience. Some listen, most don’t. No worries. I gotta pay the rent. The irony is that I generally play very well here. I pull out songs that I don’t do usually. I kick back on a stool and sing. Someone has a request, I play it. The owner and staff are friendly. I play original material, party songs, everything in between. They applaud when I least expect it. At some point I won’t be playing this sort of gig anymore. I will have outgrown them. But I will miss it. The freedom to saunter musically on the supposition that almost no one’s paying attention so it’s ok to get a little loose; to go where my fingers and voice take me without any sense of trying to amaze, amuse or pump them up with energy. Perversely it makes for a good show. Too bad so few hear it.

home…

Germans are among the least understood people in Europe. When I travel outside Germany people tend to look at me sadly when I tell them where I live. In Latin countries they just shake their heads in pity at my chosen exile to this land of cold people. Before proceeding I have to say I know that to generalize about an entire nation is stupid, so here I go. Germans are the most American of Europeans concerning their personal lives. They preserve their privacy and let you in when they know you, not before. They have a complex cocktail of pride at what they’ve accomplished beginning the second half of the 20th century and guilt with their behavior in the first. You’ll find this residual collective guilt even in young Germans. Young Turks don’t spend much time pondering the genocidal behavior of their grand parents against Armenians early in the 20th century. The young worldwide read history. They know that their sweet gray haired grandparents may have been involved in genocides or random acts of terrorism against whatever minority was handy back then. In the rest of the world the young don’t feel so emotionally connected to acts committed 60 years before their birth. Wouldn’t it be an irony if future generations of Jews feel guilty over the manner Palestinians are treated now? But I digress. Perhaps this is why also the young here have their own very visual form of penance; bad hair cuts. Arguably the worst haircuts in Europe are worn by German kids. Brits run a close second. I see hair styles that seem designed to be as disfiguring as humanly possible. It’s not a matter of being extreme. I like extreme. It’s more a matter of being ugly, another matter entirely. They are not cold people as most of Europe types them. They tend to be a bit pragmatic, true, but in the end, and after a few beers, they become loose and friendly. Then they pee. Ok. Everybody pees after drinking but others tend to do it in bathrooms. It’s a bit looser here. I live 40 meters from the city wall that surrounds central Nuremberg. If stone could be dissolved by urine the city would be completely unprotected. In this place where laws are enforced strictly and to the letter it’s not uncommon to see men peeing publicly. Manners dictate that one should turn facing away from the sidewalk and anoint the city wall. It’s a time honored tradition. This can occur perhaps at the same place one’s grandfather left some ancient lager 70 years ago. You get used to seeing it. They have interesting ideas about their body. If they’ve eaten a lifetime of too much deliciously rich German food and are quite overweight this is no reason not to wear that tiny speedo thong or enjoy the nude part of the local lake shore beach. You don’t like it? Don’t look. It’s a free country.