10:20 AM, April 10, 2002, Melbourne, Australia
It's Wednesday morning in Australia, Tuesday night
in the U.S., and I thought I'd drop a line to catch up before
getting back to work with four shows in the next four days. Monday
was a travel day, and yesterday a lovely day off in the low mountains
west of here. My hosts Susannah and Rohan have been wonderfully
welcoming, and yesterday Susannah took me to one of the more
magical places I've visited. William Ricketts, a brilliant and
eccentric sculptor, created a sculpture garden in a bit of wild
bush near Olinda. He was infatuated with Aboriginal people, faith
and culture, and wove these themes and this art into the landscape.
It's a mystical and unpredictable place, and his sculptures,
primarily clay, are so interwoven with the landscape that it's
sometimes hard to tell where the human creation starts and the
natural creation ends. The tree ferns here and in New Zealand
have maintained the same mystical aura they held the first time
I saw them. The huge fronds make me feel like I must have shrunk
to eight inches tall.
one of Ricketts' sculptures of an Aboriginal
child under a tree fern
It's such a privilege to get to experience such things,
and to encounter such generous people who choose to share them
with me. I've just had a few great days in the Sydney area as
well, spending some time with new friends and older friends there,
and hearing and playing a bunch of music.
While playing in Sydney I stayed in a flat (that's
an apartment) on the beach in Wollongong (south of Sydney) with
my buddy Liz, who plays bass in the killer Aussie trio Jigzag.
Rough life there on the beach! :-)
It was poignant to visit friends Jim & Valda again,
who live in the area the bushfires decimated on the day after
Christmas. Their house was spared literally by seconds, with
the firefighters screaming into the driveway as a wall of fire
charred their yard and approached their house. Jim and I took
a walk along paths we had walked a year and a half ago, and the
charred black trunks of trees were striking. Also impactful,
though, was the bright green new life springing out of those
trunks. The metaphor is screaming at me, and I can't help but
be touched by the hope that inspires for our broken, bleeding
world.
The time in New Zealand was as warm and beautiful
as my last trip there, which is no small praise. The trip has
held so many lovely moments that it would be tedious for me to
even begin to recount them all. I've been rediscovering my love
of photography on this trip, too, and will be most happy to subject
you to pictures if you catch me some time after a show. :-)
Another thing I've been getting back into on this
trip, after quite a break, is songwriting. I have two new
songs, one of which I wrote in Hawai'i, and one of which
I co-wrote with my friend Jared White in Nelson, NZ. I'm really
pleased with both, and I have a couple of others that are cooking
in the cognitive crock pot. It feels good to be writing again,
and to have designated some time to be still enough to do so.
After all these years, writing continues to be a challenge for
me. The craft of it, and the creation of space in my life which
allows for new things to come into being.
Back to the tour, though... I won't run through all
the shows I've done individually, but I do need to debrief about
the Australian National Folk Festival, since I've been talking
for months about the fact that I was booked for it. I had a ball,
and loved each of the five sets I played. This is a picture of
the set I did on the big stage. It was a blast to play rock star
for the night and plug into the huge sound system and stage lighting
and such.
I also participated in a couple of round table performances,
one on songwriting and one on guitar, which were a delight. In
the guitar workshop I ended up playing just after Tony McManus,
a world class fingerstyle guitarist from Scotland. I was a bit
intimidated by that, but in the end I simply explained to the
audience about the little mouse Tony hides in his right hand
which plucks away furiously with all four paws and allows him
to appear to play that fast. I felt much better after that.
I also got in a set at the kids' stage, after which
I had this jam with a young fan, Ashley. In this shot I am obviously
teaching him how to purse your lips and scowl to get just the
right tone out of the guitar.
In other news, we just heard that my song Drops Like
Me from S.S. Bathtub (my kids' record) took first place in the
Northern California Songwriter Association's 2002 song contest.
That's the third national award for that record, which is sure
affirming.
So Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide, then home for a
few days before leaving for six weeks out in the southeast and
Texas. As good as the trip is, I can't pretend that it won't
be good to see my own pillow.
We're adding lots of shows for the summer and fall
(in the northern hemisphere, that is), and I hope we'll be able
to catch up somewhere along the line. Until then, thanks for
checking in.
May peace be within, among and through us,
David
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