letter to a friend

I'm back home, home is a monitored sort of drug free rehab-lite facility in Hawaii with it's own semidisfunctional farm attached.

I went rehab/china/rehab

I had some pretty extensive therapy since xmas last year when I came in after living in a cave suicidally depressed and starving. I'm 5 months clean and sober and doing OK. It was good to go do a gig and break the cycle of the pattern I had where I was sober at home with the wife and kids, (although stoned a lot) and then drank heavily while touring. This last gig was a new experience and not as hard as others I had failed my sobriety at before. I'm at a point where impulses are secondary to a general celebration of my sobriety, I love not having hangovers and not feeling like a puppet to impulses I can't control. I think my writings better too.

The marriage is over and that took a couple of years of intense grieving to accept. I still have great relationships with the kids though.

Too much info? Well that's my style I guess. 

I have a book recommendation for you. 

Emma Donoghue: Room

I'll not say more, just get it and read. It's profound.

Interesting you are working at what amounts to a real estate promotion gig. I've found that most of the Chinese gigs are packaged 'look at the lifestyle we offer-invest here' kind of things. I suppose a lot of the gigs we do internationally are like this in more subtle ways but I miss that idealism of simply being part of communities celebrating themselves.

The first gig in China was like that. All the others have been attached to some new development touting some projected quality of life if and when people moved into the already standing condos or those still to be built on the wasteland surrounding the opulant settings we worked in that had literally been put up in the months before we arrived. The last gig in the first 2 days we had to get off the bus a couple of hundred yards from the stage because they were still building the road to it but after those two days we could drive right up and the roadbuilding continued past us. Also there were thousands and thousands of freshly transplanted cherry trees all over the place [it was a blossom festival] all with intraveinous bags attached and wooden tripods holding them up until their roots unfurled. The funny thing was they didn't blossom in time for the festival. It's a surreal life we have isn't it?

I had my stiltcam going on stage and while roving and with part of the fee have bought a probook so I can play the film and edit it to put it online. My notebook cannot process the richness of the files so in a couple of days i get to relive what I recorded.

I had several hundred chinese schoolkids sing me happy birthday in both chinese and english, that will be good footage.

Dado was there too, he was a good grounding element although I have to admit I wound him up from time to time, played with his control issues. I know the Chinese , especially those we were in front of who are over 1000 kms from multicultural shanghai only perceived the surface of things and so I cheerfully danced to upbeat but deeply shocking lyrics on a kind of rotational basis. Dado was the only person to notice and it made him so uncomfortable that he shut my sound off while I was onstage at one point. I wasn't upset, again it's all about the surface to the rows of elderly chinese sitting offstage so I simply tottered sidestage and told dado, It's not about you being comfortable Dado.

I had it coming, That day it was nine inch nails, 'closer' where the chorus goes, "I want to fuck you like an animal"

heh heh, I think I filmed that.

Dado was a big hit, got lots of laughs and i think succeeded in further showing himself the pancultural strength of his material. My character was as always generally aloof and observational, [I mean hello! I have a HD camera on my flying helmet] I did interact however I didn't do 'bits' I just improvised round whatever. I took part in a circle of woman doing some ethnic dance stuff, that was awesome and I'll certainly treasure that footage when i finally get to watch it. Dado filmed lots also. Some of his and my stuff was shot concurrently and I have his footage also, the dancing with the women and the birthday singing and so that will make for good editing,

He had a romantic project for his wife's birthday where he recorded groups of Chinese and individuals all saying 'I love you' to camera. I grabbed all that footage and will post that on a daily feel good piecemeal random love-diet basis shortly too.

With power comes responsibility. My first impression after grabbing all the 'I love you' footage was how sentimentally powerful it was. You could potentially conquer people with it. I had to squelch the impulse to subject my ex wife to a wistful wave of incoming artfully contrived affection. 

ok that's enough from me. It's 4-23am, I got up at 1 because it's day three back and the jetlag is still doing it's thing. I just sleep when I feel like it and when I wake is just OK with me.

hope alls well