Beowabbit

My New York trip was delightful; I wish I had time to do it justice. Here’s the quick overview, though:

Saturday brunch with eisa and nex0s at a nice French café called French Roast at 85th and Broadway. We sat outside so Puppy Monster could hang out with us. The waitress really liked him, and brought him a pie tin of water. The food was good, and the conversation was excellent! I had a great time catching them up and getting caught up. Then nex0s rode with me partway to K.’s performance, and we got to talk some more on the subway.

Kala’s performance Saturday night was amazing! She’s a composer in residence at Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and this was a work-in-progress performance. It was really powerful. It’s called Axis of Beauty, and it’s a response to the war and the US war propaganda that depersonalizes an entire culture. It consisted of K. narrating and playing piano (sometimes by plucking the strings) and drums; her friend and collaborator Sukato playing ukelele, doumbek (a kind of drum), violin strummed like a guitar, and her voice (and “playing her voice” is probably a better description of it than “singing”); recorded electronic music, and recorded interviews with Iraqis about their experience of the war, which she used (with permission) from War News Radio. It all worked together really, really well.

I was really glad for the opportunity to meet Sukato, whom I’d heard a lot about, and after the performance I had the pleasant surprise of meeting Kala’s father and stepmother, who took us out to dinner. K.’s sweetie Alex was also there, and it was nice to see him, but he didn’t join us for dinner.)

Then I went back to eisa’s, and we got more good conversation in before going to sleep. eisa rocks.

Sunday morning, eisa went off to spend the day with her father, and I headed downtown to meet sexykneesocks for brunch at Shopsin’s. I had a really great time. I got biscuits and gravy; sexykneesocks had a bowl of grits with her meal, so we both went to New York City for Southern food. :-)

Then I had a few hours to kill before seeing K. again, so I wandered around a bit, including taking a brief nap in Central Park until the rain woke me up and getting my film from Hawai‘i developed.

Then Sunday late afternoon I met K. at the new Fifth Avenue Apple store, which looks entirely appropriate as a tabernacle for the Cult of Steve, and we wandered around Central Park for a while. It was really good to see her, and to do a bit of catching up. Then I rode back to Tribeca with her (where she was going to see another performance) before turning around to get my car out of the garage and drive home.

Due to a misguided notion of how to get to I-95 in NYC, and a long foray in Connecticut looking for fuel, it was 1:30 before I got home. And due to LiveJournal and email, it was 3:00 before I was in bed. I’m going to do better tonight. :-)

Today I met gishmi1ish for dinner in Central Square. I wanted to introduce her to Baraka Café, the great Tunisian place on Pearl Street, but it’s closed on Mondays, so we ended up at Mary Chung’s, which still made us both happy. She’s a good sport for listening to my sleep-dep blather about my week in Hawai‘i and my weekend in New York; I feel like I talked non-stop, but it sure was fun.

You know, I’m lucky to have such wonderful people in my life.

Now is time to sleep!