NAGOYA Curry

The English version of the air stewardess' announcement before takeoff "In the event of a collission, air masks will drop from above your head" was almost as scary as when flying with Korean Air a few years previous when the pilot himself spoke with his loose understanding of the difference between "l" and "r"..."Radies and Gentremen, this is your Pirate speaking, welcome and enjoy your Fright"!! English as a second language jokes aside, the best announcement was probably when flying from Tucson to Phoenix, Arizona, "In the VERY unlikely event of a water landing...in the desert....your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device...."

So, you'll never guess where I am....I'm sitting just outside of the automatic sliding glass doors which are shaking from the extra bass of Bollywood R&B, of the Sports Bar which belongs to the nephew of my late Indian sarangi teacher, in downtown Nagoya, Japan. It was a rather last minute trip, I had been planning to return to China while my visa is still good, along with my new Scottish jazz guitarist, and wend my way to Yunnan Province in the far southwest and meet musicians in Dali, then head back north to Xinjiang to Kashgar and over the border into the hidden paradise of Hunza where a whole town of musicians is awaiting. But the plan had to change...perhaps for reasons too complex and related to the web of human destiny for me to ever comprehend.

The too cool for their own hairdoo Indian bro`s are very busy entertaining, so I`ve been left to my own and have basically discovered "shopping" as consolation to this. The magic hues of purple that were all the rage in Milano last winter have reached the Orient, and I managed to find some very impressive sales going on.... Trying things on, the store employees make a ceremony out of taking items off the hanger and handing them over to customers in the dressing room. After buying items, the clerk then walks the client to the entrance and on the portal hands over the finely wrapped and sealed bag. Walking into a restaurant, for hot sake and salty chicken wings, guests are "announced" with a frenzy of yelling by every employee ("foreigner has come into our restaurant and sat down in the front left side table, welcome, welcome" repeated 4 times over).

The most perplexing news to report is that my very dear Japanese artist friend whom I met when I was first in Japan in spring 1997 on tour with a small group of shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) players from NY (I played sarangi and sang a song with dulcimer that had a verse in Japanese translated by Hide (the Newburgh poet and artist) that people sang along with, and played Darius and Ron`s crystal bowls).....this is a long run-on sentence to say that Nakae San, perhaps the most interesting person I have ever had the honor of knowing, is now looking on from the stars. It feels surreal to be in Japan without him, it is not Japan to me anymore. He had dubbed me "Comet Angel" which I use as my stagename and website URL, and carved a stone time capsule for me which was cemented into the front portal of his traditional house in Kyoto, it has been 10 of the 20 years til opening Christmas 2018. When he first sent me pictures of the time capsule I thought he was crazy, but I was touched and decided to create a celebration and invite all friends in my life to come to Kyoto for the opening and celebrate friendship.

I believe before returning to dig into the Korean World Music House project in Chungju, I will go to Kyoto to meet Minooka San and visit Nakae San`s resting place and pray at the Shinto forest shrine famous for it`s endless towering orange gates, Fushimi Inari, eat some ice cream, and perhaps climb Mount Fuji very slowly over the course of a couple of days with my Australian friend, Brad, who was my first roommate in Korea when I moved to Seoul to be a "music teacher" in 2002 - he was the "art teacher" but unofficially we were both simply baby-sitters trying to keep the kids from hurting each other as we sat around waiting for our boss to call in friend after friend to borrow enough money to pay our salary.

From Strikers Sports Bar and Grill, Iqbal`s spicy curry bar in Nagoya....sending love....