Tour Snapshots

SNAPSHOTS:

You might imagine that I would just have to coordinate the different
work of the teachers, the drivers, the hotels and restaurants, and
explain to and entertain the kids; that's what it says in my job
description. But most tours I end up being the dumping ground for
everyone's issues, and trivial issues they are, and people come to me
completely regardless of anythings I might be doing or saying with
someone else. At the Chagall Museum in Nice, a typical example. Not one
but three old French bitches from the museum are interrogating me about
my group and giving me instructions "How many people? How old each one?
Where are their passports? What school from? Nationality? Put their
bags here. Does a teacher have a teacher identity card?" The kids: "How
long do we have to stay? Do I have to check this bag? Where are we
going this afternoon? I want to get my bellybutton pierced. Do I have
to check this bag? Can we go out after dinner? Are you coming to the
airport with us tomorrow?" One of my teachers had misunderstood and
gone back to the hotel without telling me, leaving her kids in my care,
but the other teachers were asking: "How long can we stay? Where is the
hotel? Is Chagall's such and such painting here? What time is dinner?
Why did that other teacher go back to the hotel? Brianna is feeling
sick." and at the same time telling their kids to check their bags in
the wrong place and to go inside before they had their tickets. Then
the teacher's 10 year old son, just to contribute to the pandemonium
and show he understands my role, comes to my face and says "WHO WHAT
WHERE WHEN WHY!?!?!" The funny thing is, he was trying to help. So I
didn't kill him. I didn't kill anyone. I smiled, and gave the different
groups different posters to stand under 20 feet away from me so I could
figure out one thing at a time. 30 seconds later they were in the
museum enjoying it. I now first have to exchange pleasantries with the
museum bitches so they explain to me politely the proper documents to
have ready next time. Then I go in and try and give the kids some basic
lines to appreciate in the art, "Can you find the horse in every
painting? Who is the horse? Which one is your favorite?" Soon they are
calling each other over to show each other different stuff. Then I go
make sure my teachers are enjoying themselves (the gay professor has
calmed down now, he says, "Magical! Just magical!" he says "I come here
every trip and I just love it! How can I complain?!" and I DON'T say
"You complain like a five year old girl at least 3 times a day."). So I
leave them to it for half an hour while I go find the secret path that
cuts under the traintracks back to our hotel and isn't on any map. I
find it next to a pagoda.

Now I'm on my third trip already. This group has been totally surreal
-- all black boys from Kentucky with their mothers. Their language
knows no plural or auxiliary verbs: "When we eats again, ma'am?" is not
incorrect so I understand a good 85\\% of what they say. As of
yesterday, I was raised to the honorable rank of Brother Joshua.

They are here to sing for the poor unsuspecting French. Last night was
their first concert, in a Performing Arts School. These kids are age 8
- 20, and they stood up in their suits and ties and had a true church
meeting. They swayed and stomped and snapped their fingers and clapped
and closed their eyes, and the mothers were vocal in the audience. The
French students' jaws chipped the wood floor. Then the French students
got up and sang French classics like Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel,
acting out all the angst, and the Americans' mouths hung open.

I reckon for everyone involved it was like if you were walking down the
street and ran into Mickey Mouse. Not the cartoon of him or someone
dressed as him, but the real thing. You'd be like, "What? That guy
really exists?!? I thought he was just an icon, a stereotype." The
French people didn't want us to leave, and they exchanged
addresses.

I'm not such a bad boy. I worked extremely hard all winter teaching and
paid off all my credit card debts. I have now not one debt. Do you know
anyone else like that? Now I am laying away for... Something. I've been
doing the tours and then I had a month off. Have you ever had that
either? a month with no work and no place to go? It kind of sucks,
because I am not responsible enough to have such a great liberty. I got
extremely drunk 5 days a week, never went to bed before dawn or got up
before 2pm or left my apartment before 5pm. I played my guitar only
about 2x a week, and I didn't start my novel or anything, although I
did spend some good times with new and old friends, in town, on the
phone, and on the net. And I didn't spend too much money, really.

Boys don't stop maturing at age 12, they actually go in reverse and get
less mature. Then in college they make up some of the lost ground if
they are lucky. But if they study business they usually finish with a
mental age of 4. America is encouraging everyone to act like children,
to think only of one's self and the immediate moment, to believe that
everything is fine and good and homogenous and static. Not all
societies have been like this.

Yesterday I came back from Rome to Paris again. I put the group on
their plane at 6am. The next 2 flights to Paris were full so I drank
beer and played guitar. Then at noon the airport went on strike for 6
hours. I called my company to see if they would pay me a hotel room,
but they said no so I just slept on the airport floor for about 3 hours
and had some shitty expensive lunch. Then I went back into Rome to see
if there was a night train or something, but I didn't like what I saw
so I went back to the airport. I finally got registered on an 8:30pm
flight, which they announced at 9 had technical problems, at 10 that
they had found a piece that would fix it, and we took off at 11:30pm. I
got to Paris at 1:15 in the morning and waited until 2:15 for a taxi.
It was raining so hard in Paris that the highways were flooded and we
had to take back roads; I got home at 3am. What a nightmare.

I'm back now, and back for awhile. Yes, the tour season is probably
done for me, and done right. My last tour was a real whopper with 80
people and 6 performances and 7 hotels and 1 night train and 14 days.
The group sang in the Vatican and almost got kicked out for singing the
wrong sort of mass!! I finished the day before yesterday and slept for
15 hours and then yesterday night I got BLASTED with friends and took a
taxi home and passed out in the taxi and when the driver woke me up I
asked him in Italian what he had done with the group. But slowly it's
sinking in that I am ALONE and I love it.

So now what? I'm not being too hard on myself just yet, but by Monday
at the latest I need to get going on my Projects. I don't know exactly
what Projects or which among them but I have about 500 things I want to
do before February when I start touring again. I want to learn Italian,
I want to write and record some songs, I want to travel and work some
of my gut into my arms and chest. I want to take chilled bottles of
wine into sunny public gardens and bask.

It's a hodgepodge, but that's what's been in my life and minds. I hope
you are amused and I'll hear from you soon.