Cantiga: Michelle's Blog

New Website!

I've been busy, busy, busy putting together an online art portfolio. So as a bit of shameless advertising, you can see it HERE!(www.portfolios.com/MichelleLevy)

Changes to Blog

I'm at my folk's house now in MA, making good use of my personal desktop computer; I just scanned and put up some photos and sketches for past entries.See "Thanksgiving," "New Orleans," and "Happy New Year."

Also, my blog is just getting too big, so from now on, it is displayed in sections, reading from most recent (at the top) to the oldest entry (bottom). I hope it will be easier to read now. Please let me know (via email or the guestbook) if it isn't!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everybody! I hope you all had a good holiday... and if you didn't, maybe next year you should hire The Yuletide Carolers or the Pacem Trio!

sketch of Al's cat, Cadbury

same cat

I played a wedding today with Al Cofrin and Abby Green from Istanpitta... I think playing weddings are one of the highlights of being a musician. Because even though what it comes right down to is I play because I have to, becasue *I'm* obsessed with music, because *I* love it-- that in itself isn't very rewarding ... it fulfills my personal fundamental needs... but it's the ability to bring a little magic to someone's day.... or to make a moment in their life sacred-- that is truly inspiring. In Bob's words, "it's nice to feel useful."

And playing with Istanpitta is always a blast because they are so creative and have such a great sense of humor. Abby has a beautiful website: www.AbbyGreen.com and she keeps 2 really great blogs (click on "links")... one by her, and one by her cat. She's very funny, and I really enjoy keeping up on what she... and her cat.. have been up to.

New Orleans, Part Deux

So back to what I was saying about New Orleans. I should start from the beginning, before Martha and I even got there…

Driving through the Texas-Louisiana border, Hurricane Rita had left her footprint in the shape of countless trees cracked and split right through the middle, even grand old oaks so majestic and historical, they had been untouched and preserved, even as a highway was built on either side of them-now hardly any are left standing. Entire roofs are gone. We saw views of views of entire neighborhoods with houses pieced together in blue tarp. Massive steeples wrangled and smashed down from church tops. Smashed dead trees everywhere. Garbage, garbage, garbage.

Driving past this unbelievable destruction, we crossed bridges where I was awed by nature once more-but this time by its beauty. On either side of us were beautiful swamp/lakes with cypress and beautiful mulberry and silver colored trees dotting the water as far out as I could see… it was a landscape I had never even imagined. The mid afternoon sun was hanging low on the horizon, sparkling on the clear blue water… bright neon green plants... such vivid colors! The sun set and danced magenta, orange and lemon yellow in the rearview mirror as we battled through the terrible pre-New Orleans traffic.

Entering New Orleans, we were faced with destruction again. In addition to the torn apart houses and massive piles of garbage everywhere (friends who live there tell us the town did several “sweep-throughs” already but the contents of disemboweled houses are still spilling onto the streets), we passed through a lot jam packed with totaled cars towed from the hurricane. The chalky white dirty water line was visible on nearly all of them…. most seemed to have simply drowned, but one car I saw was smashed flat down the middle so that both ends curled up towards the center….and smashed windows everywhere. There were still duct-taped refrigerators with all their rotted contents sealed shut dotting the landscape (can you imagine an entire city of people's rotten flooded refrigerators out in the streets? they were still working on that when we got there!) … some people spray painted pictures on them and used photographs of them as humorous Christmas cards, others wrote the White House address on them with the note “Please send to George W. Bush”.

Still, when Martha and I entered the French Quarter, it was beautiful nonetheless. It was mostly functioning… there were even lots of tourists, with most of the galleries, restaraunts and shops open. Bands were still playing in the bars…. though most bands have been split up, not everyone has returned yet, some might not return, and so the musicians who are left are combining forces and putting new bands together-I really enjoyed the Jazz Vipers. They are HOT jazz players, with fiddle, accordion, singing, piano, electric guitar, string bass, drums, and Helen played cello with them that night for a while. They were out of this world and totally inspiring. (I'm always in awe of my luck, when I'm sitting in a bar just a few feet away from musicians I admire, listen to all their songs, and all it costs me is a couple drinks.)

People had a lot of stories to tell about the hurricane, but some were sick of hearing and talking about it. When Martha and I arrived, there was still a curfew in effect, which was not going over very well and was abolished, I think, on New Year's Eve. (Helen and I narrowly avoided the curfew… otherwise, if we had missed it, we would have been stuck in the bar until the sun rose, or in trouble with the cops.) It felt like wartime, passing by blown up buildings, and the remains of houses, and avoiding curfews. I just couldn't believe this was America!

But I was impressed with the incredible resilience and sense of humor everyone I met had, despite their frustrations and nightmarish experiences-Helen's roommate jokingly said, “Well actually, it's not so bad-now we have this great new swimming pool…. in our living room. And a beautiful green garden…. on our walls. And you wouldn't believe our sky-lights!” Our neighbor hung a Christmas wreath made of empty mildew-cleansers, bleach, chemical mask, rubber gloves and a plush snowman. Someone else had salvaged a mounted deer head, hung it on the back of his pick up truck, and put safety goggles and a dust mask around his snout. There was also some very funny post-hurricane art in the galleries-my favorite was a puppet in the window of Kenny Ford's “Idea Factory” shop in the French Quarter. It was a puppet-clone of one of the guys in the shop, a fully bearded man with big plastic frame glasses, adorned with big tacky women's earrings, a skirt pulled above the knee and high heels. Reclining in its little puppet chair (with its legs crossed), it held a little wooden sign in its lap: “Katrina, you *[censored]*, don't even talk to me.”

And there were no parking tickets!!!

New Orleans


Photos by Bud Logan

When Martha got the phone call a few days before Christmas from our cellist-friend Helen in New Orleans--“Nobody’s playing music in the streets anymore!”—we decided to come over and do what we do best—play music and party. And as you can imagine, we fit right in.

I had never been to New Orleans before, but Martha, Helen, and many people we met said that it was so weird not to have music on the street anymore. For two days we were the ONLY street musicians. On the third day (Christmas Eve), a glass harmonica player and an electric guitar player showed up in Jackson Square… a couple brass players outside of Café du Monde (Café du Monde is where you eat Beignets*, not to be confused with Café Beignet, which is across the street, where you certainly do not eat du monde…. but for a couple days I was REALLY confused.) Yay! For the first time ever, I was glad to have competing street noise.

Photo by Bud Logan

We decided to call ourselves the Pacem Trio— with a three-fold meaning for our own amusement: 1) meaning, Peace Trio 2)by chance we were all dressed in patchwork clothes 3) “Pacem” as in “Patch ‘em”, patch up New Orleans! Rebuild! Renew! …and we were overwhelmingly well received—with one exception.

When the cops came on the first day, we had just finished a rollicking rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, complete with jingle bells, violin and cello solos, and red noses. We had a crowd! Nuns had stopped to listen on their way to the cathedral in Jackson Square! People were smiling! But the cops were not amused and told us we had to stop playing. We were obstructing the sidewalk (ok I can buy that) and someone had complained. COMPLAINED? I was incredulous. Who complains about harp, violin and cello playing Christmas music right before the holiday? Could we have sounded that bad? And what was more, we weren’t even allowed to set up in Jackson Square. Helen was perplexed… that’s the classic place where musician ALWAYS set up. It’s always SUPPOSED to be full of performers.

Sketch of Cathedral in Jackson Sq.

But Martha pointed out the businesses probably thought we were taking attention away from them, and not to take it personally. And the nice balloon clown we met told us there were no laws against playing in Jackson Square and he advised us where and how to set up. So we had no problems after that.

So our days were filled with caroling, and our nights with partying, eating rabbit sausage and French pastries, drinking red wine, and smoozing with local jazz celebs. Who could want anything more?

There is of course, more to tell, about the destruction we saw, about the curfew, about everyone's hurricane stories.... but my time is up at the library... more to come soon!

*The beignets (fluffy, greasy french pastries) at Cafe du Monde are covered in so much powdered sugar that you can't help but get it all over your face. shirt and pants-- and it blows EVERYWHERE. Martha and Helen say you have to wear black clothes when you eat there, so that everyone knows where you've been. And when you get up to leave the table, someone comes with a broom to sweep up the blizzard of sugar you've left all over the floor, table and chair.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO BLOG PART SIX