new friends

I’m going to start with some of my new friends. I made a couple of really good friends here circuitously through a craigslist posting I put up advertising myself as a violinist. About a month and a half ago I began feeling out a number of different musicians, and band situations. Some I let go, and some I have stuck with. I tried a rock-band that I really liked, because they let me play drums, and base, as well as violin, but I think they either thought I was too weird, or just decided they didn’t want a girl around all the time. Probably a combination of both.

Right near the beginning of my craigslist adventures I met a drummer named David, who I have become really good friends with, and am working on a number of projects with. Mostly all of them are whimsical: the kind of projects that I have always wanted to do, but have never found someone else who thought they were worth the time, and have never had confidence in my own belief that they were worth the time. One project is just drum set and violin. We are working on Bach partitas (trying not to make them sound horribly cheesy in the drum set/ violin combo), and also improvising in odd meters using my lesson in canartic music (Indian violin) as a guide. Another project has one other member (a composition major named Geoffrey). This one is pretty undefined as of yet. We mess around with various instruments (including toys). I always bring my ukulele. We write stuff down on paper, make opera’s to storybooks, and listen to Bartok, Schnittke, and anything else that comes up. David also introduced me to Janggu (traditional Korean drumming). I have been taking lessons every Saturday morning for the last 2 months. This is costing me 30 thousand won (that is less than $30 in total!). Most of the students in this class are foreigners, but the teacher is Korean, and doesn’t speak hardly any English. He speaks to us in Korean, and we don’t understand anything he is saying, but it works just as well. The drum speaks for itself. I am also playing in a jazz band with David. Most of the members of this band are Korean. They speak a lot better English then our drum teacher, but long discussions on the way we are going to play something are definitely out of the question. I’m going to start taking Korean lessons with the base player next week.

Now to the bluegrass crowd…..I wouldn’t have been able to organize these people through categories (for better or for worse) a month ago.

One of the guys I met through craigslist (Yvon) introduced me to a 60 something year old banjo player named Roger. Roger was a bit rusty when I met him, but super super keen. We started a jam session at a place called the Orange tree bar on Sunday afternoons. The bar is usually closed on Sunday, so we had the whole place to ourselves. The acoustics are beautiful. Lots of wood and windows. Good resonance of sound, and reflection of light. Mood is important in these kind of situations. The orange tree bar is in the most foreigner dense area in Korea (Iteawan). We played with the windows open pretty soon we attracted some street interest – other bluegrass players!, and/ or people interested in playing bluegrass. From the street we drew in a guy who calls himself Mississipi Dave (even though he comes from Winnipeg). He is kind of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to instruments (mandolin, accordion, guitar). He brought in his band for a couple of weeks (a pretty top notch crew of bluegrass players). Peter (a singer and base player) worked as an MC in Nashville for around 20 years, and won a bluegrass world championship in 1997 (I really have no idea what that means). I think his band did the shredding though. He’s mainly a singer and entertainer (but he’s definitely solid). Also with this group was a super charismatic Korean guitar player named Que-ha. I think of him as mythical, and this is why. When he is in a room, and you haven’t noticed him, the room is balanced, but as soon as he enters your awareness everything is focused on him, and he is not loud. It is as if he came out of the mist. It sounds like I have a crush on him (maybe I do), but only because he is extremely charismatic, and most people (including strait men, and gay women) probably also have a crush on him, because that is what charismatic people do to everyone else. He’s a solid musician all round. It is very clear from his playing and improvising that his abilities go far beyond bluegrass, yet all of his accompaniments, and solos fit perfectly into the genre (a kind of musicianship that I aspire to). It turns out that he is a jazz guitar teacher at a college in Incheon. I’ve talked to him a little about his teaching, and he teaches old jazz (like 1920’s stuff), bluegrass, blues ect. to his students. Super cool. I wish he was my teacher in university!

A very important character in my life, for a very brief period of time, was Cate. I say was, because she suddenly left Korea a week and a half ago on a whim, and I haven’t written this blog for so long that I didn’t even mention her, but she is well worth talking about. She also came to the bluegrass jams on Sunday (although sometimes very late or not at all). She is also not really an old boy (although she may aspire to be one one of these days), so she’s not really part of the bluegrass crowd. I enjoyed joking with Roger and Dave calling her a wayward youth when she showed up 2 hours late for the jam sessions because of excessive drinking the night before. Cate is 23. She is very cool, which sometimes can be mistaken for age, because confidence comes with age, but young people always show signs sooner or later. When she met me, I think she thought I was younger than her, because I got very big sister vibes from her, and she was quite surprised when she found out how old I was. I am getting quite extreme reactions to my age here which is actually not as nice as one might think. I feel like I should wear a bit button that says “I’m 30” because every time I tell people my age after I’ve hung out with them for awhile I feel like they are almost angry (I think maybe because they are making young person exceptions for me or something), and it makes me feel really bad. The nicest reaction I have had (that didn’t make me feel bad at all was just recently. A singer I met to play music with asked me how old I was. When I told him he replied “really!” I said “yes”. He said, “you’re just a really big kid”. I liked the fact that age was associated with bigness (it made me laugh). Also, he didn’t hesitate for a moment before making a comment. It is moments of hesitation that make me feel nervous + it made sense to me. I feel like a really big kid.

Anyways: Cate. I’ll describe Cate by what she does. She writes brilliant funny country songs. You should check out her myspace: www.myspace.com/categiordano1234. She also makes films. I haven’t seen any of them, but just before she left she rented a studio to build a white buffalo for a film that was going to be staged live (like a play) at a sports bar in Seoul, with a bluegrass band as a narrator. I was flattered to be cast as the narrator/band leader. The play was cast with a male lead (played by her), and a supporting female character played by a man. The film was supposed to be some sort of western cowboys and Indian thing, Native Americans to be played by Koreans. The whole idea had a kind of possibly politically incorrect, gender/race/culture bending quality that I really appreciated the sensibility of (if you can use the word sensibility for that). Cate studied film in arts school. One of the projects she told me about back home was a big song and dance production with 100 or so people that she called “Dolly Presley”. My understanding of it was basically a big party with singers, dancers, and “Dolly Parton/Elvis Presely (in one person) impersonators.

My relationship with Cate was based on making up vocal harmonies to her lovely drawling melodies, and criticizing people/art/music ect. as a team. That is what I fell in love with, and have been missing since she left. I named us the “eagles” from the muppets. The couple of weekends I spent with her we to shows, and walked around on the street criticizing the hell out of everything. This kind of activity can be super irritating if you do it with the wrong person. It can get super negative, and even boring, but Cate was just the right kind of intellect, and just the right kind of humor for me, and we had a pretty jolly time tearing things apart together.

Now the open mic. people. The open mic is at a bar named Woodstock in the really obnoxious foreigner area. Note: there is also a bar called the “Hardrock café” in the same area. This area is called Iteawan, (I think I mentioned it before). It is the area where foreigners can go if they need to act like bad stereotypes of American’s. I don’t always feel safe on the street at night by myself in this area. Everywhere else in Korea feels ridiculously safe. The Woodstock is O.k. though (quite O.k.). It is hosted by a guy named Jeremy. He is a big southern American with a good sense of himself, and where he comes from, and a good sense of the rest of the world too (a real rare breed). He is a great open mic. Poet. One of the few I can listen to. His poems are short and sweet. I’m not being sarcastic. The sweet part is important too. His hosting style is similar. If he ever uses humor between acts, he never performs long, extended soliloquies that take away from the main acts (and he is also actually funny). When I first met Jeremy he was very welcoming. He saw my violin case, and he asked if I was going to play. I told him that I would accompany someone if they wanted me to, but besides that I was going to sing. We talked a little about singer/songwriters, and I said I was looking for people to sing backup vocals. He volunteered his girlfriend, and had such confidence that we would get along, and work musically together, that I believed him. Jeremy also bought me 2 shots of Jameson the first night I met him. He scored lots of points with that one, especially considering the fact that he is completely in love with his girlfriend, so it was out of pure hospitality, and friendship. Jeremy’s girlfriend’s name is Rebecca. She is from England. She has a beautiful deep voice, a motherly personality with a feminist edge, a good sense of humor, and classic hippie good looks. She did wonderful backup vocals (we practiced out in the hall) that first open mic. on 2 of my most simple songs. I played some violin for her on a Gillian Welsch song. Jeremy and Rebecca are one of those super solid couples around which communities gravitate. I have begun to develop a theory about these types of couples: They become like mom and dad in social circles of people who have been kids for way too long (by most standards) ie. the majority of our generation, all the ones not rooting and having kids themselves. I think these couples both love and resent this role. Being mom and dad to a bunch of grownup kids with full-grown personalities has got to be a very challenging experience.

At the same open mic. night I met Lorena. Lorena was in the audience. I was introduced to her by someone else simply because we were both Canadian. This kind of thing happens a lot here. Lorena is from New Brunswick (ah the east-coasters). Fortunately her personality reflects her background well. She is welcoming, grounded, and funny, with a very high tolerance, and appreciation of alcoholic beverages. Of course shortly after meeting her I started talking about Ingrid. There is enough of a common vibe among east coast Canadian’s that you can’t help but miss your east-coast friends when you meet another east-coaster. I soon discovered that Lorena lived about a 5-minute drive from my house, and she had a car, so she ended up driving me home. On the ride home we talked about music, her husband, her boys, and the Korean drummer that wanted my phone number, and stood speechless and awkward in front of us as we were leaving for a good minute before Lorena got him to ask. She told me that her husband is sort of Buddhist but non-denominational. She tries to get her sons to meditate in the mornings, but it doesn’t usually work. She told me she has a shack on an island near Incheon with a piano in it that I would be welcome to go and play (WOW! Since that first car ride I have been to the shack and played the piano – another story). She also told me that she was looking for part time work. Earlier in the week my boss had asked me to work more hours (10 more hours a week: way way too much for someone who has never had a regular job). I wanted to help him out because I knew that it would be hard for him to find a part time foreign teacher. With an E2 visa (the one I have, and most foreign teachers have), you can only work for one employer. Also, the inability to say no that is prevalent in Korea, is contagious. He was offering to pay me overtime, but I just didn’t want to do it. Lorena was a perfect candidate. Because she’s married to a Korean she can work for whoever she wants, and she lives five minutes from the school, so it would be easy for her to commute. Lorena was such a perfect solution to the problem at work, that it made me wonder what kind of things were going on in the sky around Sagittarius (just kidding). It was ridiculously good though: I meet an interesting woman who lives close to my house, and wants to take the work I don’t want. She was such a good candidate for the job, and the pickings were so slim it was almost gauranteed that she would be hired. I would have a friend at work AND not have to work more hours. Lorena was such a great person to meet for so many reasons. She is established in Korea in a circle of Korean's that I would never meet without a foreigner to bridge the cultural, and language gaps between myself, and the type of Korean's I am really interested in meeting. She knows spriritual people, musicians, and artists. These are the kind of people who generally aren't quite as obsessed with the west, and as a result learning english. Korea has such a strong divide between the 2 types of people, that the older (more traditional type is almost impossible for a foreigner to meet. You won't get closer to them through the commercial obsessed ones (and the Christians), because these people reject the older culture. The new type of Korean is much more acessable to a foreigner. I took Loreana's card, and gave it to my boss. Within a week she was hired. Now her oldest son is in my class, and he is a pleasure to teach. I don’t see her much at school, but our encounters are always positive. She has invited me to her shack, taken me up a mountain to a temple for Buddha’s birthday, and also invited me to a kiln opening of a traditional Korean potter.

Now I feel like you have the background. Next posting will be about my adventures, and I promise to include pictures, and some videos too. But I have to warn you in advance that the ones of the most beautiful place I visited where taken on my cellphone because I forgot to charge my camera before i left.

lots and lots of love. I miss you all.

p.s. those of you in Montreal (or anywhere with good coffee) SEND ME COFFEE! Instant coffee is going to kill me before the bomb falls on us from North Korea. My adress is:

Cassie Norton c/o Micheal Yoon
HeeRim Tower 5F, 100BL-1LOT, Danga-dong,
Seo-gu, Incheon, 404-310 Korea.

I promise to post more often if I get lots of coffee!!!!!!